


When Days Go From Dark to Bright

by cytheriafalas



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Kidnapped Stiles, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new hunter kidnaps and tortures Stiles, the boy who runs with a pack of werewolves, but isn't one of them. After Derek's pack comes to rescue him, Derek is forced to deal with the knowledge that his concern for Stiles isn't just that of an Alpha for one of his Betas. The pack, Sheriff Stilinksi, and Chris Argent all wait at Deaton's to see if Stiles will even survive, and what kind of shape he'll be in if he does. Written with The Kin's "Get on It" EP on repeat. Title from "On the Rise." Fic is complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There's A Hunter

“Somebody needs to tell me what’s going on,” Stiles said, turning in the middle of the burnt-out former living room of the Hale house, eyeing everyone in turn. Nobody met his eyes. Even Scott looked away, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm on his thigh. Isaac, Boyd, and Erica looked to Derek for guidance. Peter lounged on one of the scorched-but-not-completely-burnt chairs. Allison and Lydia were looking at one another and Stiles got the feeling the two girls were having a full conversation. Finally, he rounded on Derek, who was glaring at Scott as though he had personally offended him, although he looked to be lounging against a wall. “You are all at like DEFCON six hundred right now.”

“There are not six hundred levels of DEFCON,” Derek said, glancing up at him. He was frowning, which wasn’t that unusual, but it was an aggressive frown, even for him.

“I don’t care and _not the point_!” Stiles snapped, his voice coming out louder than he’d intended. Scott jumped a little and even Peter sat forward, suddenly interested in the proceedings.

“Stiles,” Derek began in the aggrieved, pseduo-patient voice he used on Scott when Scott got a little too uppity with him.

Stiles spoke right over him. “I admit, it took me longer than it should have to realize something was going on. I mean, Scott practically lived at my house when we were younger, so it wasn’t that weird that he decided to camp out in my bedroom. But then he went on that mini-vacation with his mom and I started to feel like I was being followed. Which, if I may remind you, sucks.” Stiles had been watching Scott for any guilty tics, but at that, he rounded on Derek again. “You set Peter on me!”

“I did not set—”

“He tried to kill me!” Stiles shouted. And if he sounded a little hysterical, that was not his fault.

“I offered to turn you,” Peter said, standing and starting to walk toward Stiles. “I did not try to kill you.”

“Peter…” Derek said, and even Stiles could feel that warning. The new werewolves flinched in unison, looking as though they had all caught poison ivy simultaneously.

In a particularly gutsy move, Peter ignored Derek and stalked closer to Stiles even as the warning rumble turned into a low growl. “I followed you for your own safety. You think that just because you’re not a werewolf you’re safe? You can’t even defend yourself, kid.”

“Peter.”

That was the tone of voice that even Peter, with the odd blood-family/wolf-pack contradiction that the two of them had, didn’t dare ignore. He turned back to the chair, granting Derek a wide berth. Derek snarled at him again and Peter snarled back, once, then ducked his head in submission.

“This was pack business until a few days ago,” Derek said once Peter had retreated far enough out of the circle. “We got word—”

“We don’t even know if it’s true or not,” Scott interrupted.

“Scott,” Allison whispered.

Derek made a gesture that was somehow both permissive and oddly bitter. Stiles didn’t know why he looked so agitated. “He’s yours. If you want him dead because he’s not prepared, that’s on you.”

“Wait. Dead?” Stiles asked, looking between Scott and Derek. “Dead is not something I want to be.”

Scott let out a sound dangerously close to a growl and Stiles began to realize he was standing between two werewolves who really did not get along. He was standing in a circle of werewolves, actually.

“Stiles, just listen,” Lydia said, taking a small step toward him.

“There’s a hunter,” Scott began. “He’s heard about you somehow. A human who spends time with werewolves, but isn’t one of them. You’re not born of a pack and you haven’t been bitten.”

“So he’s—he’s what?”

“Hunting you,” Derek said when Scott wouldn’t meet Stiles’s eyes. “Scott’s been running himself ragged trying to keep you safe the past few weeks.”

Scott shot an angry look Derek’s way, but Stiles was already backing away, out of the circle.

“Past weeks?” Stiles asked. “Past weeks and nobody told me? What about my dad? How many weeks?”

“Stiles,” Lydia said, placating.

“We didn’t want—” Scott started.

“Not a real question, McCall,” Stiles said, still moving blindly toward the door.

He groped for the door handle and finally felt the cool metal beneath his fingers. Lydia had taken another step toward him, concern shining in her eyes. He didn’t want concern right now. He wanted someone to tell him what was going on.

“What about my _dad_? Would he hurt him, too?”

“We don’t know,” Derek said. “Right now, he’s just looking for you. You’re safe here and you’re safe at the loft. He won’t dare touch you there. You’re safe with me. Us.”

Stiles flung the door open, pelting out and sprinting into the wilderness that surrounded the Hale property.

He made it maybe seven steps before Isaac caught up, loping easily alongside him, seeming like he was just taking a casual stroll through the park while Stiles was panting for breath. At least it wasn’t Peter, because it was not all that long ago that he’d felt the claw digging into his chin and he had been pretty sure he was going to die.

He didn’t want to die. In fact, he didn’t want to die so much that he didn’t notice the first arrow whistling past his ear or Isaac’s yelp of pain until after the werewolf was howling for help. By then it was too late. Stiles didn’t even feel anything slam into the base of his skull before he fell to the forest floor. He heard, faintly, the sound of a seriously pissed-off Alpha and then nothing.

 

Stiles did feel it when he woke up bound to an uncomfortable metal table in what he was pretty sure was a pool of his own blood. For a few very confusing moments he thought he could hear his own blood sloshing around on the floor. But that wasn’t right. In the past few years, he’d been around more than his fair share of blood and wounds. He knew that while the occasional _drip-drip-drip_ of blood could very well be his, there was no way the sloshing was. Not if he was still conscious.

The blood may have belonged to the hunter’s other victims. If it really was the hunter that had him. Or it could have been his and he was having some sort of strange, painful, out-of-body experience.

The rest of Stiles’s senses began to kick back in one at a time. The room was dark without so much as a sliver of light from under a door or behind a curtain. Unless he had gone blind, vision wasn’t going to be very much use. The metal was cold beneath his questing fingers, but warm beneath his body. He had to have been on that table for a while. He may not have had a werewolf’s sense of smell, but he caught a whiff of brine, which made him feel, oddly enough, better. The ocean. He was in a boat on the ocean. The sloshing was the boat and not his blood. Or the blood of any of this hunter’s victims.

Calm enough now to start thinking rationally again, Stiles began tugging at the restraints on his arms. They clanked a little as he moved. Chains, affixed to metal cuffs. His ankles were secured the same way. Thick bands stretched across his shins, thighs, hips and chest. All of this seemed to be a little bit of overkill. Stiles didn’t think he could even stand, much less fight his way out of any one of those straps.

A too-bright yellow light flared on in the ceiling, or… whatever you called the bottom of a boat deck. Stiles jerked away, the back of his head slamming into the metal table. The sound rang out like a gong, vibrating through his skull. Waves of black floated into his vision, blocking out the light. The black covered his vision completely and everything faded out.

When Stiles opened his eyes again, the light was still on and he was hanging from a grate built into the central wall of the boat. His feet were on the ground, but his legs weren’t holding him up. He grabbed at the metal of the grate to pull himself up to a nearly standing position and looked around.

A man stood a few feet away, looking remarkably feeble in only the way elderly, decidedly non-feeble hunters could look. He took a few steps toward Stiles, moving easily with the rocking of the boat. 

“So you’re the kid who dances with wolves.”

Stiles knew that if he survived this he would be having the world’s worst nightmares starring that smooth, rasping voice.

“I’m a pretty terrible dancer,” Stiles croaked. “My dad did try to teach me the electric slide once—”

He didn’t even see the cane moving before it whacked into his chest, slicing a thin red line in his skin and tearing off a few buttons from his shirt. Stiles heard them clattering across the floor in his stunned silence, too surprised even to cry out. The hunter struck him again and he made a pathetic choking sound.

“The werewolves,” and that sneer had to be genetically passed from hunter to hunter, “I understand. They live and die by their pack, but you’re human, kid. You don’t need to die with them.”

No, Stiles wasn’t a werewolf, or even officially part of Derek’s pack, but he’d seen the look Derek gave Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, sometimes Peter when he was in a particularly magnanimous mood. Even Scott, Allison, Stiles, and Lydia had earned it. He would die before he did anything that would hurt Derek or his pack, although Peter could go hang most days of the week.

“Not a big fan of dying,” Stiles said. “I was thinking of looking into vampires, too.” That cane cracked across Stiles’s midsection and he cried out again. “They — ah, ow — they must have immortality in the bag.” Another strike, higher on his chest and Stiles felt his skin rip. That was a strange sensation that he really didn’t like. “Werewolves are real, why not vampires?”

Stiles didn’t get to say much more. For a man of his age, the hunter had a strong arm. There was warm blood dripping down Stiles’s chest, almost tickling in the brief respite between strikes. After the fifteenth lash, Stiles kept count only because it seemed to dull the pain, he felt a sharp popping on the side of his chest and it hurt to breathe.

He blacked out not long after that.


	2. Yellow/Green

Stiles had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He’d been untied and left in a heap in front of the grate. A single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in the corner created more shadow than light, but it was bright enough for Stiles to see a plate and an orange on the table beneath it. The fruit didn’t look like it had held up very well since being plucked from the tree, but Stiles was reasonably sure they wouldn’t try to poison him. He didn’t know if it was possible to poison someone with an orange, but they had poisoned an apple in _Sleeping Beauty_. It was probably possible, and so he wasn’t willing to give the whole idea a pass.

He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since the morning he’d requested Scott track down Derek, but he had no way of knowing how long ago that was. How often they planned to feed him was still a little up in the air, too. Stiles crawled to the corner and grabbed the orange, curling up beneath the table. The position eased the ache in his ribs just enough so every breath didn’t bring tears to his eyes.

His nails were too short to tear the peel off. He eyed the orange — more yellow/green than orange — and bit into it, grimacing at the bitter taste. The fruit came free in fiber-covered chunks, most of it still stuck to the rind. Unwilling to leave even the tiniest bit behind, he stuck whole sections into his mouth just to get the last of the pulp free, spitting the acrid rind onto the ground.

The orange was tainted by the taste of his own blood. Blood flaked off his hands and his shirt was in tatters, sticky and red where some of his cuts still bled sluggishly. He kept it on mostly because he was already cold and even a few extra square inches of fabric was better than nothing. The jeans he’d been wearing had fared pretty well, muddied and torn at the knees from his fall in the woods, but still mostly intact. His shoes had disappeared. Harder to run away without them, he supposed. Not the deterrent they thought it was, if only he could figure out _where_ he was.

Hungrier now than before he ate, Stiles pulled his knees closer to his chest, wedging himself into the corner. He could still breathe. As long as he could still breathe, he was still alive and he could still get home. His chest felt tight and he forced himself to breathe as slowly and as deeply as he could. The oxygen was there. It was getting into his lungs and he could still breathe.

The familiar mantra eased the panic. Scott and Derek would find him. They always found everybody. They would find him and everything would be okay. And his dad — oh god, his dad. Jonathan was probably freaking out. He was probably the center of a missing persons investigation right now.

Stiles shifted a little in the corner and bit back a sob at the spike of pain through his body. He didn’t think his rib was broken, but it definitely hurt. The cane’s cuts stung and burned whenever he moved. Stiles wrapped his arms around himself and rested his forehead on his knees.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. A couple of seconds of clunking metal later, the door opened. The hunter walked in, looking him over. Stiles tried to push himself to his feet. It worked. Mostly. It was a slow process and he felt like the hunter was more amused than impressed and intimidated.

“The first time you use that lightbulb as a weapon is the last time you have a light. Come here.”

Stiles considered it, but he figured that he would end up hurting himself more than he would have hurt anybody else. It was still a last resort option, right before he ran past however many hunters were on the boat and dove into the ocean or lake or whatever and promptly drowned because if he could barely stand, how was he going to swim to shore? “I think I’ll stay here.”

Three more men appeared in the doorway. They were younger and fitter than the hunter who had been Stiles’s companion thus far. The older man nodded at them; Stiles thought he saw some family resemblance.

“You can come here or they will bring you here.”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way?” Stiles guessed. “My way or the highway? The high road or the low r—”

Before he could finish, the three hunters had him by the arms and hauled him back to the grate. He actually felt his rib shift as they shoved him up against it, one man holding each arm while the third attached the shackles. Stiles could barely move to fight them off. He wasn’t even sure they realized that was what he was trying to do. Pain burnt up his side and finally all he could do was lean against the grate.

“What do you want?” Stiles asked as the other hunters retreated. He watched their feet head toward the door with his head down. It hurt too much to try to move enough to watch them go. “My dad’s the sheriff.”

“I know.”

He was prepared for the cane. He was waiting for the cane. He was not prepared for the fist to his face, snapping his head back into the metal. The hunter was stronger than Stiles would have guessed. Dark lines roiled in his vision and he felt fresh blood dripping down the back of his neck.

“I’m not—” Stiles had to hunch over to spit blood. He ran his tongue around his mouth and found a molar that moved when he touched it. “I’m not telling you where Derek is.”

The hunter laughed and, oh yeah, if he survived this, that voice was haunting his nightmares for the rest of his life. “Why would I care where Derek Hale is?”

He punched Stiles again and this time as Stiles leaned forward to spit out blood, he definitely saw a tooth go with it.

“The name’s Marcus, by the way. I don’t think I introduced myself properly the first time we met.”

The statistical likelihood of his survival dropped significantly, and Stiles’s stomach dropped with it.

“Besides, he and his pack have been running so very frantically through Beacon Hills for the past five days — searching, presumably, for you — that even the most novice of hunters could trap them without much trouble. Got that Hale Alpha in quite a tizzy, it seems.”

As much as Stiles wished it were otherwise and that Derek was actually frantic over his absence, he figured it was probably Scott who managed to get Derek in a tizzy. But he also figured that was none of Marcus’s damn business.

“My dad’s not going to stop until he hunts you down,” Stiles said, doing his very best not to think about how panicked his father had to be. Five days. He’d thought maybe two or three.  
“Sheriff Stilinksi will be kept busy.”

Marcus hit him again and bright white lights flashed behind Stiles’s eyes. It was a change from the waves of black, but not a very comforting one.

“Why? Why me?”

Marcus laughed and punched him in the stomach. The orange roiled in Stiles’s stomach, acid and fear combining to make him feel sick. “Why not you? Sooner or later you’ll be mine. You’ll do what I want and believe what I want you to believe.”

Stiles wanted to tell him he was lying, that it wasn’t that easy to brainwash the Sheriff’s son, but Marcus was right. Stiles couldn’t pretend he was protecting Derek or the pack and it didn’t sound like his father was in any danger. There was nothing he could say to stop the pain or the beatings. They would go on exactly as long as Marcus wanted them to.

And Marcus didn’t stop for a long time. Marcus had blood on his knuckles when he finally stepped back, leaving Stiles hanging from the grate by his wrists. His knees had buckled long ago, wrenching his shoulders, but he couldn’t force himself to his feet.

Marcus stepped up and unhooked Stiles’s wrists, leaving the metal shackle on him. Stiles fell to the ground in a heap.

“What do you want?” Stiles asked. His voice cracked.

He asked the same question the next seven times Marcus visited him. Marcus came back once more with his fists, twice with the cane, once with an iron rod he heated and used to trace Stiles’s spine and ribs, twice with an actual whip that tore the skin on his chest and back to shreds, and once with a cattle prod that left tiny scorch marks all along Stiles’s side.

Stiles spent the rest of his time curled beneath the table under the single light in as tiny of a ball as he could comfortably manage, flitting between consciousness and unconsciousness and not always sure which was which.

Somebody left him food while he slept. Sometimes it was fruit or granola bars, once it was a ham and cheese sandwich. He threw that up. The water they gave him in a dog dish — because it would have been funny if it hadn’t made Stiles want to cry — and was always warm with a faint taste of iron.

He dreamed when his body managed to slip into sleep instead of unconsciousness. Dreams where he stood with the pack but they didn’t acknowledge him. They didn’t even seem to see him. His dad, coming home without badge or gun, and closing himself in the house, standing alone in the doorway to Stiles’s untouched room.

He danced with Lydia in an empty ballroom; she wore a white dress that flowed around her like a cloud. He begged her to come find him and she laughed. He danced with Derek under a full moon and Derek promised to find him, hands gripping Stiles’s waist so tight he felt fingers when he woke up.

He sat alone in a hospital waiting room, unsure whose room he had just been let out of. His mom’s, maybe. Or Scott’s. Or Isaac’s or Allison’s or Boyd’s or Erica’s. Maybe his own.  
Coach told him to get up and get back on the field. Told him to finish the run or he would have to take two econ tests that week. Told him people were looking for him. They would help him. He just needed to keep running.

Derek stood alone in Stiles’s room with his eyes closed, breathing deeply through his nose. The dream was never quite the same, no matter how many times Stiles had it. Derek sat on the bed or flipped through the closet or stood in the middle of the room. Always alone and always silent.

He had horrific nightmares of Peter Hale’s teeth in Lydia, or those sharp teeth breaking Stiles’s skin. His house torn to shreds by werewolves or hunters, sometimes both together. Faceless, nameless beings chasing him, tearing the pack apart one by one. He flinched awake every time, tearing open wounds and sending fresh rivulets of blood down his skin.

“Tell me, Stiles,” Marcus said the eighth time his heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Stiles closed his eyes to block out the sight of him in the doorway. “What do you think of werewolves?”

Stiles knew the right answer: Dirty, murderous creatures that needed to be put down. Words were just words. He could say it, earn Marcus’s trust, run home. Run to his pack and the safety Derek provided. His traitorous mouth refused to say it.

“They’re my friends.” His voice shook, any pretense of pride long since gone. He curled in on himself, waited for punishment, but none came. Only a long, slow sigh.

“Lay down on the table.”

Stiles stumbled to the table, unaware he’d even given his body permission to move. But it wasn’t really his body anymore. Anything that could stave off the pain for a few more hours, minutes, seconds, was enough. He was disgusted, but he couldn’t stop moving. Stiles walked gracelessly, holding himself up with his fingertips in the uneven grooves on the wall.

He braced his palms on the table to catch his breath. Blood still stained the metal, flaking onto his skin. Stiles took a deep breath and heaved himself onto the table, rolling onto his back. His vision went gray with the effort. He must have started bleeding again somewhere.

“There’s a storm moving in,” Marcus said, drawing a syringe of clear liquid. Stiles tried to read the label, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. He was tired. “We need to dock and go inland, but we can’t risk you getting any funny ideas. I had hoped to be able to let you go, but we have all the time in the world.”

Stiles didn’t feel the needle. He sank into a pain-free unconsciousness.


	3. That's A Weird Storm

He woke to the sound of rain. He was groggy, still bound to the metal table and alone, but he knew he was no longer in the boat. There were windows, for one, and whenever lighting raced across the sky he could see trees waving madly. It was beautiful and steady and Stiles kind of wanted to cry at how beautiful it was. A boom of thunder shook the house; Stiles could hear the glass rattling in the frames. Someone upstairs screamed and Stiled could have laughed at a grown man screaming at thunder if it wouldn’t have hurt, but then the house shook again, this time unaccompanied by thunder or lightning.

This was important somehow; he knew it. His mind was too sluggish, body dragging him back under again. It mattered. The noises he was hearing mattered. Screams and crashes and—and something else that _mattered_.

He hoped there was enough of the drug left in his system to make his sleep painless.

Another crash, louder and closer than the others, and a six-foot section of the wall crumbled. Rain lashed Stiles’s skin, stinging him back to a fuzzy consciousness. He tried to squirm away from the cold, but he couldn’t move. He was so tired.

“Stiles!”

The rain was yelling his name. That was weird.

“Open your eyes!”

He felt pressure on his ankles and then cold where the straps had been. The same thing happened to the ones on his shins and then a loud creaking sound. That was confusing. He’d never heard that sound before.

“Eyes, Stiles! Now!”

Oh, right. The rain was yelling.

He managed to drag his eyes open enough to see two glowing red dots in front of his face. He’d never seen a storm turn the stars red before.

“This is a weird storm,” Stiles mumbled as the red lights flicked out and then in again.

“Jesus. Scott!”

“Scott’s not—” Something clicked and Stiles tried to shove himself up, only to fall back to the table in a spasm of pain. He curled up in a half-ball, trying to find some way to ease the pain. “Derek?”

Stiles was pretty sure he felt a hand cupping his cheek right then, felt the tips of claws gentle on his skin. Possibly even felt the brush of Derek’s stubble against his jaw. But he’d also thought the storm had changed the color of the stars and that the rain had been talking to him, so he wasn’t putting a lot of credence in his powers of observation just then.

“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Derek said, his voice right beside Stiles’s ear. “Can I carry you without hurting you?”

Stiles doubted it. He also wasn’t entirely sure that Derek was really there. This was probably another cruel hallucination, like the time Lydia’s white dress had carried her into the sky and away from him. “Rib, right side. Back, all of it.”

Derek moved the entire table, lifting one end several inches off the floor and rotating it. The vibrations in the metal shook his body and Stiles bit his lip to keep from crying out. Arms lifted him, pressing Stiles’s right side to a solid chest. Even that movement, as comforting as the stabilizing pressure of Derek’s body was, sparked waves of agony. His back arched even as he fought to stay still. Moving away from the pain just made it worse. Blood dripped down Stiles’s back and he thought he heard Derek swear, but everything was fading away behind rain and a strange roaring in his ears.

“We’ll get you home, Stiles. Hang on.”

“I smell blood. Derek, what’s going on?” The voice was familiar, but Stiles’s head was lolling back, his eyes drifting closed again.

Scott, a small voice whispered.

“He’s hurt bad,” Derek’s voice said. He sounded like he was moving away and Stiles reached out to catch him. He reached out and caught the back of Derek’s neck, feeling drenched hair beneath his fingers.

“I’ll take him.”

“No!” The snarl surprised Stiles enough to bring his eyes open. Four sets of yellow eyes and a pair of blue ones stared at him from the rain. The eyes he assumed belonged to Scott retreated a few steps.

Derek stepped out into the rain and if Stiles thought the gusts he’d felt before were cold, this was freezing. Even Derek’s unnatural body heat couldn’t keep him warm. He shuddered.

“Cover us,” Derek ordered to the wolves behind them, breaking into a run. “It’s not far. Only a few miles.”

Stiles felt blood pooling on his stomach from one of the lash marks on his chest and the cold rain sapped his strength. He hurt; he was tired. His eyes closed and the arm he’d slung around the back of Derek’s neck flopped free.

“Stiles. Stiles, stay awake.”

He managed what was probably a groan of some sort. That didn’t stop Derek from jostling him very gently in his arms.

Derek kept running, checking every couple of minutes to make sure Stiles was conscious. He floated in and out, but every time he woke, Derek’s arms seemed to be tighter. If this was a hallucination, it was a very strange one. There usually wasn’t so much downtime before something bad happened.

They stopped once, Derek settling Stiles at the base of a tree. Stiles blinked up at Derek as he pulled his shirt off.

“Lean forward just a little.”

Stiles pushed himself off the tree and nearly toppled over, but Derek caught him, propping Stiles against his leg. He helped Stiles into the shirt and lifted him again. The fabric was wet with rain, but even that was warmer than nothing. It eased his shivers a little.

“I swear if you don’t stay with me, I am going to go back and slaughter every single person in that house,” Derek said when he bent down to pick Stiles back up. Stiles thought he heard Derek whimper in response to his pathetic cry of pain, but that was definitely his imagination. As was the way Derek rubbed his cheek against Stiles’s head.

“Blackmail,” Stiles mumbled through the pain. He made himself loop his arm back around Derek’s neck because Derek shook him less often when he did that. And because he was warmer. “B-blackmailing me with v-v-violence.”

“Not blackmail,” Derek said. He started running again. Stiles didn’t know where they were going, but Derek never faltered, even though the heavy rain. He didn’t even sound winded. “If we lose you, the whole pack couldn’t stop me. Peter would help me.” Derek laughed bitterly. “I should kill them all for doing this to you.”

Stiles tried to figure out what that meant, but he was losing time again. Sometimes he could hear Derek talking to him, but most of the time it was just a roaring in his ears and he wanted to sleep.

“Can you open your eyes?” Derek asked at last and Stiles realized he was no longer running. “We’re here.”

Stiles was pretty sure that opening his eyes should have entitled him to the kind of monetary bonus gold-medal Olympians won, but he did it anyway. “Here” was a huge black shape with glowing yellow eyes. An SUV, he realized, as the yellow eyes dimmed and a door opened, depositing a man shouting his name.

His dad, in the lower half of his Sheriff’s uniform and an old and tattered college sweatshirt, stumbled to a halt in front of them. He kissed Stiles’s forehead, hands carding through his tangled hair.

“Stiles? Stiles, oh god, Stiles.”

“We need to get him out of the rain,” Derek said. His father disappeared and a car door opened. “He’s been in and out of it the last ten minutes. I gave him my shirt, but he hasn’t stopped shivering since I found him.” Stiles’s body shifted as another set of hands began to ease him out of Derek’s grip. Stiles whimpered. “Be careful. He might have a broken rib.”

The relative warmth of Derek’s body disappeared as other sets of hands took him. They eased him into the backseat of the SUV. It shouldn’t have been so hard to stay quiet. He was used to hurting by now. He felt like he’d been hurting forever. This wasn’t anything new, but every time his body shifted, more waves of pain rolled through him.

Another set of hands took him by the shoulders to pull him further into the car. Stiles tried to open his eyes, but the car’s dome light was too bright. He had to close them again. Stiles was relatively sure this wasn’t one of Marcus’s tricks, but he didn’t know for sure. He hallucinated half the time.

The hands nearest his head reached further down his back and caught one of the open burns on his back. Stiles flinched away; he must have made some sort of sound, but he couldn’t hear anything beside that roaring in his ears. He thought he heard his dad sob.

They got him settled on the seat and the hands all disappeared. Suddenly alone, Stiles reached blindly toward his feet.

“Derek?”

“I’m here.” A hand closed on his. “Lift up your legs. Let Jonathan sit beside you.”

Stiles tried to obey, but his legs felt like dead wood. Derek’s hand let go of his and then he felt someone lifting his legs. Somebody, he presumed his dad, slipped into the seat and cradled Stiles’s legs as though they were something precious.

“Don’t go,” Stiles whispered. His lips were numb, but he forced the words out anyway.

He was alone for a few seconds, then a hand brushed across his forehead. “I have to check on my pack,” Derek said, warm breath gusting across Stiles’s ear. “I’ll be right back.”

“No need,” Isaac’s voice called, loud enough that Stiles jumped. The car was suddenly filled with a flurry of noises, dripping water, scuffling feet, and slamming doors. The car rocked as everyone settled, reminding Stiles of the rocking of the boat. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut.

Derek counted heads under his breath. When he reached five, he eased his arm beneath Stiles’s shoulders. “Sit up as much as you can.”

Derek did all of the work, lifting him a few inches off the seat and sliding underneath, then easing Stiles’s head down onto his lap. The final door slammed shut and the dome light turned off. Stiles cracked his eyes open.

A thick, gray blanket appeared out of nowhere and his dad’s hand tucked it around him the way he had when Stiles was a child.

“Derek,” Scott whispered. Stiles could see his head poking over the back of the seat.

“I know,” Derek said. His fingers traced an odd pattern down Stiles’s face. It wasn’t until he skirted Stiles’s jaw by a large margin that Stiles realized he was probably trying to avoid the worst of the bruising. “I smelled it the minute I found him.”

“Smelled what?” Jonathan asked, and Stiles hadn’t heard that kind of raw fear in his voice since they’d gotten his mom’s test results from the hospital. The tone made Stiles sick to his stomach that he had been the cause of it.

“Infection,” Derek said, pressing the back of his hand to Stiles’s forehead. His skin felt cool and Stiles tried to lean into the touch. The car lurched forward, wheels crunching on gravel. “He’s burning with it. It’s everywhere; not just in his wounds.”

“I can’t believe—” Chris Argent’s voice began from the driver’s seat.

“Believe it,” Peter snarled. There was more wolf than man in his voice, a kind of rage Stiles didn’t think should be directed at anyone on his behalf, certainly not by Peter who had tried to kill him, after all. “You think a wolf did this to him? We would have ripped his throat out and been done with it. If we’re going to kill something, we do it. We don’t toy with our prey, not like this. Torture is a hunter’s trick.”

“Dad?” Stiles asked.

The hand on his calf squeezed gently. “I’m here, kiddo.”

“I-I’m okay,” Stiles said. It was getting harder to speak. He tried to reach for his dad’s hand, but found his own too heavy to lift. Jonathan’s hand found his anyway and he squeezed Stiles’s fingers.

“I know you are,” Jonathan said, “my brave, strong boy.”

He heard more voices around him, Boyd and Erica arguing something about what they should have done to the hunters, Chris Argent counseling patience and that what they had done could have been construed as an act of war if he hadn’t been with them. There was more, but it faded into a muted silence.


	4. Yesterday's Protein Bar

Somebody was above him, a hazy shape back-lit by a brilliant light in the ceiling. There were raised voices somewhere far away. Everything was muffled, but Stiles could hear two shouting voices clearly through the din.

“I told you if you couldn’t protect him, I would do it myself,” Derek said.

“He’s not yours to protect,” Scott’s voice countered, just as loud. “He’s not pack! He’s human!”

“You’re doing great, Stiles,” the voice above his head said. It was Deaton’s voice. “We’re almost done here.”

Stiles felt a faint pinch on his arm and things began to fade away again.

“Isaac, go tell them to quiet down or I’m lining the entire building with mountain ash and they’ll get to see him on his thirtieth birthday.”

 

The second time he woke up, everything felt wooden and hollow. There were shapes and shadows of shapes that might have belonged to people, but they were fuzzy and confused. Their voices echoed as though they came to him through a long tunnel.

“We should take him to a real doctor,” Jonathan said. Fingers stroked his hand and Stiles tried to squeeze back, but he could barely open his eyes.

“There would be questions,” Peter said.

“I’ve got everything here that they have, Jonathan,” Deaton said.

Stiles forced his eyes open as far as they would go. It wasn’t far. The shadows were more defined as human shapes, but no more than that.

“Can you bite him?” Scott asked. Someone stood so close to Scott that it was hard to tell them apart; it must have been Allison.

Derek stepped out of the shadows, eyes fixed on Scott. He looked wrecked; there were dark circles underneath his eyes and his facial hair was scruffier than usual.

“It would kill him,” Derek said. He ran his fingers through the fringes of Stiles’s hair. The sensation began easing Stiles back to sleep. His eyes closed as Derek moved closer. Stiles felt the huff of a breath against his throat and then it seemed like Derek nuzzled at Stiles’s neck.

Stiles was pretty sure he’d dreamed that. Derek had rescued him out of loyalty to Scott and the pack, not for him.

“What about taking some of his pain?” Isaac asked.

“We have been,” Erica said. “As much as we can, but it’s not enough.”

Derek started to reach for him, but Peter appeared from nowhere and stopped him, catching Derek’s arm. “You’re not strong enough.”

“Who else is going to do it? The betas aren’t experienced enough and he’ll probably have a heart attack if you touch him.”

“You need sleep, Derek. And food. A protein bar yesterday doesn’t count.”

Derek pulled free and splayed his hand on Stiles’s bare chest. The sensation was dulled. He should have felt warmth from the hand, but it only felt like a weight. Derek’s eyes were fixed on Peter.

“What’s he on?”

“Standard painkillers and sedatives,” Deaton said. “If you think you can handle it, you both should be okay.”

Black lines spidered up Derek’s arm and the last thing Stiles saw before his eyes closed again was Derek’s head tipped back, lips tight. Peter’s hand was still on his shoulder, gripping him so tightly his nails had turned white.

Stiles drifted in and out over what he thought were the next couple of days. He was never completely alone when he woke. He saw Derek, Scott, and his father most often. Strangely enough, it was Peter and Lydia after them. Erica, Boyd, Isaac, and Allison showed up regularly as well.

Stiles tried to pick up on the little details that would help him tell time. Clothes changed, but that didn’t always work. He would see Derek in one shirt, then Lydia in two different ones, and Derek in the same shirt later. The weather helped; light and dark through the windows, but he didn’t know how much light or dark he missed between periods of consciousness.

Sometimes they talked to him. Lydia had taken to reading to him. He could never follow what she was saying for long, but her voice was steady and he could anchor himself in it. He knew Chris Argent came to see him only because he woke once to hear him talking to Allison.

“Dad, we can’t just let them get away with this.”

“We won’t,” Chris said, “but we have to be careful about this. I need to get support from some of the other families first.”

“They almost killed Stiles!”

“And they will pay. We know who they all are, but with the werewolves’ attack, they’ve all run. We need to track them down. If we need to do it one at a time, we will, but if we can get them all at once, it’ll make it that much easier.”

“To do that, we need the other families,” Allison said, her voice muffled. Stiles thought he heard her sniffle, but when she spoke again her she sounded solid and sure. “What do you need me to do?”

He woke up to Scott’s voice. It was some time after dark, because the overhead light was on, but dim.

“I can’t lose you, too, Stiles,” Scott said. Stiles could hear rhythmic footsteps pacing up and down the long side of the room. “You’re my brother and you’re pack. What am I supposed to do?” Scott sighed and stopped pacing. “We’re falling apart without you. Derek’s barely holding it together. I’m useless to the pack. Peter’s had to take over the day-to-day stuff. Which, don’t get me wrong, he loves. But we’re going to fall apart.

“The full moon was a couple days ago. Derek and Peter fought. It was the first I’d ever seen either of them come so close to losing control. Peter said something about Derek losing his pack for a human and Derek just… I’ve never seen him so angry, man.”

Jonathan just repeated again and again how strong and brave Stiles was, how much he loved him.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been here much the last few days, bud,” Jonathan said one day while Stiles struggled to figure out how to open his eyes or move so much as his finger, “but I couldn’t tell anyone you were missing. I had to go to work like everything was normal. I’ve been busy trying to keep everyone out of the Argents’ way so they could do what they needed to do.

“Melissa wanted to be here, but Deaton thought it would look less suspicious if she didn’t come. Too many of us are already here, and he said something about the Hale pack looking weak already. We need to keep suspicions down.” Jonathan laughed bitterly. “Who else is out there tryin’ to kill you, huh, kid? I should have been able to protect you. If I’d known, maybe I could have. But you wouldn’t have told me anyway, would you?”

Stiles tried to tell him that it had been to protect him. Stiles had gotten dragged into this, or had attached himself to Scott and made him drag him along, but he wasn’t going to get his dad involved. But he was too tired. That frustrating pull of exhaustion caught him again and pulled him under.

The next time Stiles woke up it was night — he could see the stars shining through the windows — and it was silent, except for steady breaths beside his ear. Stiles could roll his head just enough to identify the person as Derek. The others had slept in the same room with him before, but they’d never been so close. Derek’s head was pillowed on an arm in the space between Stiles’s head and shoulder. His other arm was draped across Stiles’s chest, bent awkwardly to avoid the worst of the gashes on his chest.

He tried to speak Derek’s name, but he couldn’t formulate the syllables. His mouth was as sluggish as the rest of his body. Derek sat straight up anyway and stared at him for a few seconds, then his lips quirked into something that might have been a smile. He brushed his cheek against the top of Stiles’s head.

“Go back to sleep, Stiles. You’re safe here.”

Stiles tried to say something, but Derek leaned in and nuzzled against the side of Stiles’s throat.

“Sleep. You’re still pretty weak.”

He drifted in and out for a few more days before he finally felt himself waking up. It felt different this time. Lighter and easier, not like he was fighting his way through tar and muck and grave dirt. Someone was holding his hand and another person was stroking his hair.

“Derek?” Stiles asked, expecting his voice to fail him as it had every time before. Much to his surprise, he actually heard a noise that sounded almost like what he was trying to say. Although it even didn’t sound like his voice at all.

The hand stroking his hair paused and then moved to cup his cheek. “Stiles?”

Stiles managed to open his eyes, seeing first Scott at his hand and then Derek’s face above him. “Hey.”

Derek made a strange noise that was a mixture of a laugh and a choke and rubbed his face against Stiles’s neck. So he hadn’t been imagining that. Huh.

“Hey, yourself,” Derek said.

Scott squeezed Stiles’s hand so hard it hurt, but Stiles couldn’t bring himself to complain. “I’m going to go call your dad,” he said, heading for the door. He’d made it out before he came running back. “I’m glad you’re awake!” He headed back out again.

Stiles laughed at him, or made a quick exhale that would have been laughter any other time, then turned his attention to Derek. “Is this something you do for all your injured betas?” He thought about moving his hand to touch Derek’s hair and, miraculously, it obeyed.

Derek shook his head, finally sitting up and looking at him. “Only my favorites. Do you want me to stop?”

“Didn’t say that.” Stiles thought he might have still been a little high on whatever drugs Deaton gave him. They must have worked pretty well, because his body only ached rather than the sharp pains he had felt even while he slipped in and out of consciousness. There was an IV hooked to one arm and when he pulled experimentally at it, Derek caught his forearm with a gentle, but irresistible, hand.

“You still smell pretty badly—”

“It’s not my fault I haven’t gotten a shower lately.”

“Of infection. It’s better than it was, but you still need everything he’s pumping into you. Just a couple more days. And your dad and Deaton have washed you a couple times; you don’t smell that bad.”

Stiles tried to sit up, but Deaton’s painkillers weren’t quite good enough to dull the agony when he moved. Derek caught him before he fell the few inches he’d managed, easing him back down. He grimaced when Stiles made an embarrassingly loud whimper.

“It’s okay,” Derek said, stroking Stiles’s cheeks and forehead. “It’s okay. I can take some of the pain—”

“No,” Stiles said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Derek never got the chance to argue. He pulled away just before the door flew open and Stiles found himself surrounded by the pack and his father.

He was exhausted by the time they’d all calmed down. He’d had to reassure his father several times that he was fine, even if it still hurt to move. Deaton chased them all out just when Stiles began to feel like he couldn’t differentiate one voice from another any longer, claiming to have to look over Stiles’s injuries, which he may have done. Stiles had fallen asleep before the last one even cleared the room.


	5. Five Count

Stiles was alone in the darkness, strapped to the metal table. No, not strapped. They hadn’t strapped him down. He lunged up, fighting through stiff muscles and pain. Something metallic shifted and crashed to the ground and Stiles swallowed a panicked cry.

Marcus had to have heard that. He would come down here and… Stiles heard running footsteps, more than he’d ever heard before. Marcus had brought more people on the boat. How many more? It was dark, but not as dark as it had been. The faint light through the windows illuminated a waist-high table along one wall. Stiles scrambled to it and curled up beneath it just before the door opened. He pulled his knees to his chest and tried to remember how to breathe.

Everything hurt. His chest was tight, warm blood trickled down from the cuts on his chest. The footsteps were getting closer. He couldn’t breathe.

The light flicked on; Stiles threw an arm up to cover his face. “No. No, please, don’t.”

“He’s going to tear his stitches,” a voice said.

“He already has,” another one said. “I can smell it.”

Stiles shrank further beneath the table. He hadn’t meant to open his wounds again. He hadn’t known it mattered. Marcus opened them himself most of the time, hauling Stiles to the grate.

“Stiles. Stiles, look at me.”

“He’s having a panic attack.”

Movement, bodies blocking out the light. Stiles’s chest constricted more. He was gasping for breath that didn’t come. A hand took his, gentle. It would hurt more if he fought back. It always had. Maybe Marcus would forgive him this time. Oh, god, he couldn’t breathe. He was going to die. He couldn’t get any air.

“Everyone out. Give us some space.”

They were leaving. Stiles heard them leaving, his eyes still squeezed shut. His entire body was shaking so badly he could barely stand. A strong arm pulled him in tight and then a low voice was speaking in his ear. A hand pressed to the center of his chest, firm but pain-free.

“…Three, four, five. Feel me breathe, Stiles. The air is there. The air will come. Breathe with me. One, two, three, four, five.”

Derek. He wasn’t on the boat or locked away. Marcus couldn’t get him.

Stiles wrapped his hand around Derek’s wrist and let his head flop back against Derek’s shoulder. Derek nuzzled at his throat.

“Good. Good, Stiles. Just like that.”

It was easier to focus with Derek whispering numbers in his ear. But Stiles couldn’t keep up, couldn’t make it all the way to five. He barely broke the two-count, but Derek just started over when his lungs refused to function. He let Stiles squeeze his wrist and grab fistfuls of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles choked out, turning in Derek’s arms so they were pressed front to front. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Derek said right in his ear, voice low and soothing. “You can. Keep breathing with me.”

And Derek kept counting, his hand cupping the back of Stiles’s head, just above the still-tender wound at the base of his skull. It was a long process, as long as anything Stiles remembered, but he was able to make it to three, then four, then five. After several minutes of just standing there breathing in Derek’s arms, he suddenly found himself lifted off the ground and into Derek’s arms.

“You shouldn’t be walking around,” Derek said, moving toward the table.

Stiles shook his head so frantically he nearly hit Derek in the nose. “Not the table. Please.”

Derek looked at him, but snagged a chair with his foot and lowered Stiles into it. Stiles hid his face in shaking hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be,” Derek said. He sounded further away and Stiles looked up in time to see him fling the door open. A pile of werewolves plus two human girls stumbled into him. “Get. If any of you listen in, I’m chaining you in a basement for the next two months.”

That had them stumbling back, Allison yanking the door shut behind them. Derek carried a chair back and sat down in front of Stiles.

“What happened?”

He was too tired and too sore to come up with anything but the truth. “The table. I… He would tie me down, sometimes. When he did this,” Stiles gestured to the burns on his back. “Sometimes if—” The words stuck in his throat. “If I didn’t move fast enough…”

The low growl that rumbled through Derek’s chest surprised Stiles enough that he looked up. Derek’s eyes were still green, but Stiles got the sense that he was working really hard to keep them that way.

“He’s never going to touch you again.” When Stiles glanced toward the door, Derek shook his head. “They’re far enough away that I can barely even hear them. They know not to listen.”

“How do you know?” Stiles asked. He wrapped his arms around himself. His rib was hurting again, but the only other options were standing or lying on the floor or the table, and he’d had enough of both of those things. “That he can’t…”

“He fought back,” Derek said simply. “Isaac tore his throat out.”

“Oh. Well then.”

“I would have done it whether he fought back or not, but everyone figured you’d like it better if we at least gave them a chance.”

Derek reached out, fingertips brushing Stiles’s shoulder and those black lines ran up his arm again. Stile almost cried in relief.

“I told you not to do that,” he said instead.

Derek shrugged. “Your body is healing. If you’re in too much pain, it has to spend energy protecting you from the pain and not healing.”

“I don’t want it to hurt you.”

Someone knocked on the door and Derek stood, putting a soothing hand on Stiles’s cheek when he flinched. “He’s feeling better.”

The door opened as soon as Derek spoke, depositing his father and Deaton into the room. Stiles let his father sweep him into his arms and hug him, not even noticing as Derek vanished. He grabbed a handful of Jonathan’s jacket, burying his face against his shoulder.

“You’re okay, Stiles. Everything is okay.”

“It’s not,” Stiles said, voice muffled by Jonathan’s shoulder. “It’s not. I didn’t know where I was. I thought I was ba-back there.”

“You’ll get through this. I will be there with you every step of the way. We’ll get you home soon.”

“Jonathan, I need to get a look at some of those wounds,” Deaton said.

Jonathan pulled away, kissing Stiles on the forehead. “I’ll be right here.”

Deaton gave Stiles another dose of morphine and set to looking at the open wounds on Stiles’s chest and back. He only had to stitch one of them closed, announcing that the rest of them had already stopped bleeding.

“I have a cot in the other room,” Deaton said, pulling his gloves off and disposing of them in a metal bin marked ‘biohazard’ in orange. “It’s not as firm as I would like you sleeping on, but your rib isn’t broken. The bruising is already fading.”

Stiles looked down. The bruise still spread across his side and onto a good portion of his front. He couldn’t see what it looked like on his back, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it had looked like before if this was “fading.”

“Can’t I go home yet?” Stiles asked. He was holding onto his dad’s hand like a child, but his dad didn’t seem to care. Jonathan moved a little closer to his son, squeezing Stiles’s hand gently.

“This is the first time you’ve been up since you got here. I need to keep you a little bit longer.”

Stiles hadn’t expected anything different, but he still felt the disappointment like a shock.

“Come on,” Jonathan said, heading toward the door. “I’ll tuck you in.”

Stiles followed as Jonathan led the way to the room Deaton had referenced. It was small, but there were full-sized windows, easing the claustrophobia clawing its way through his gut. The only lock on the door was on the inside.

The cot was low to the ground with a messy pile of blankets at the foot. The pain didn’t take Stiles’s breath away like it had when he lowered himself to the bed. It was probably the morphine, but he thought he felt a little better even without it. He was getting stronger. He would heal.

Jonathan tucked Stiles in, cocooning him on all sides until Stiles could barely move. It should have felt like another restraint, too similar to being tied down, but he felt warm and comfortable and drowsy. Like he would sleep instead of lapsing into unconsciousness.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been here,” Jonathan said, taking a seat on a chair set up beside the cot.

“It’s not your fault,” Stiles said. “You wouldn’t have unless you had to. Besides, I had Derek and the pack.”

“‘Derek and the pack,’” Jonathan echoed, a wry smile on his face. “Werewolves, huh?”

“Yeah. How—How’re you dealing with that, by the way?”

“It explains a lot. Probably should have told me earlier, but we can deal with that when you’re better. So, Derek’s the Alpha? I haven’t been able to get anyone to explain what that means. Everyone kind of just shrugs and says ‘he’s the Alpha’ and that’s not too helpful. You’re not a werewolf, are you? He’s been pretty out of whack the past week or so.”

Stiles barked a laugh and immediately wished he hadn’t. His rib may not have been broken, but it was still tender. “No, Dad.”

“Good. I really didn’t want to have the consent talk with him. I know Scott said something about biting you once. Drugged consent isn’t consent, you know.”

“Oh, god, Dad.”

Jonathan held up his hands, smiling. The fear and stress Stiles had glimpsed on his face the last few times seemed to be gone. Jonathan ruffled Stiles’s hair. “I think he was more worried than Scott was. He was around the house a lot in the early days. Well, the whole pack was, but he was there more than most of them. Scott said something about wanting to get a lock on your scent, but I got the feeling he didn’t need to worry about that. He headed straight for your room when I opened the door that first time, before I knew you were missing. Always seemed calmer leaving your room, too.”

Stiles shrugged a little. “Nobody knows what goes through Derek Hale’s head. He’s got a pretty strange pack, I think. A couple of humans, a hunter, and a bunch of teenage werewolves.”

“He hasn’t left you alone since he saved you.”

“Someone from the pack has been here the whole time,” Stiles protested. “I even saw Lydia. And Allison and her dad.”

“The only time I saw him sleep was when he was in here with you. And he’s always touching you. I saw him rubbing his face on you more than a couple times.”

“So he’s affectionate when someone almost dies.”

“Affectionate? Stiles, affectionate is hugging or for a man like Derek Hale, shoulder bumping. Scenting is not affectionate.”

“Scenting?” Stiles echoed.

His dad looked embarrassed. “When Scott told me there were werewolves — with a demonstration, so if I have a heart attack any day soon, you can blame him — I did some research. I couldn’t report you missing without getting in their way, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. And my personal werewolf-babysitter wouldn’t even let me out of her sight, so I couldn’t do any looking of my own. There wasn’t much on werewolves, but there was plenty on wolves, and that looked an awful lot like scenting to me.”

That thought did something kind of funny to Stiles’s stomach. He swallowed and shrugged again. “Werewolf Alphas tend to be… possessive… of their pack. They get a little riled if someone tries to take one of them. I’m not really pack the way Scott or Isaac are, but I guess I’m close enough to warrant his attention when I get kidnapped by crazy, murderous hunters.”

Jonathan’s lips twisted in something that might have been a smile. Or a laugh. “I think you warrant his attention more often than that.” He leaned down and kissed Stiles’s forehead gently instead of continuing the conversation, for which Stiles was more than a little grateful. Clearly his dad was crazy. “Get some sleep. Deaton wants to see how you can move around tomorrow.”


	6. Step Up 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday, everyone. Having Monday as a holiday confused my brain when it came to my posting schedule. Hope you enjoy! Three chapters left after this one. Another shameless plug for my tumblr: Fangirlingtendencies. Come, ask me questions about my fics or my life or my hair color.

Stiles thought getting up and walking was a great idea up until Deaton hauled him to his feet before giving him his morning dose of painkiller and the pain was enough to make him feel sick.

“Are you sure?” Derek asked Deaton, hovering just beyond arm’s reach. “He only woke up yesterday.”

Deaton fixed Derek with a look that almost made Stiles laugh. Derek didn’t quite relent beneath the gaze, but he definitely fell silent. “You may be his Alpha, but I have been dealing with injured pack members, werewolf and human, longer than you’ve been alive. Let me do my job.”

Stiles felt like he had to relearn his body. His legs responded slowly. The muscles didn’t do what he wanted them to do. He’d only been off his feet for a little over a week, or at least that was what he’d gathered, but between that and the time he’d been with Marcus, he was incredibly weak.

The first time he stumbled, Derek caught him before he even realized he was falling. Deaton ordered him out, threatening to put wolfsbane in the air conditioning. Derek went.

“I want you strong enough before you leave,” Deaton said, as though he hadn’t just told off an Alpha and gotten away with it. “You’re safe enough here, especially with the pack cluttering up my waiting room and scaring off my customers, but once you walk out that door, I can no longer protect you. And I think it might be best for Derek’s state of mind if you can at least walk quickly away from danger.”

Stiles had resumed walking slowly around the perimeter of the room, holding onto the wall like that was the only thing keeping him standing. It might have been. But he stopped and looked at Deaton. “You and my dad have been talking a lot about Derek lately. Is something wrong with him? Is he in danger? The pack?”

Deaton smiled and gestured for him to keep walking. Stiles made a face, the heel of his hand pressing against a forming side ache, but did.

“No, he’s not in any danger. From what I understand, you’re all as safe now as you have been in months.”

“So why can’t I go home?”

“Your wounds. You’re healing well, but some of them still open too easily, even with stitches. If something were to happen, if you started to bleed internally again—”

“Again?”

“—if I’m wrong and your rib is cracked and you fell, you could seriously complicate your recovery. And I’m worried about those burns. What did he use?”

Stiles reached back and touched the tender flesh at the base of his neck. A loose bandage ran from there to the small of his back. “He, uh…” Stiles swallowed, closing his eyes against the remembered pain. “An iron rod. I don’t know what h-he used to heat it. But it was hot.”

It hurt. Oh, god, it hurt. His skin was burning. He choked on that smell, on the pain. He couldn’t breathe. The rod just sat there, but whenever he inhaled, it pressed harder into his back.

Somebody was shouting, but Stiles couldn’t hear what it was.

The smell was nauseating. He pressed a hand to his mouth to try to settle his stomach. He couldn’t throw up. He couldn’t show any more weakness. He was already crying. Marcus would do something—.

Arms wrapped around him, a face pressed against the side of his neck. “Stiles. Stiles, ssh. I’m right here. Feel me breathe, Stiles. No one is ever going to hurt you again. I’m here.”

“Derek?”

“It’s me. I’m right here.”

He was on his knees in the middle of Deaton’s back room. Deaton had disappeared somewhere, leaving him with Derek on his knees with Stiles, carding his fingers through Stiles’s hair.

“It’s all right to be afraid,” Derek said. “There’s no shame in fear.”

“You would have fought back,” Stiles said, finding himself surprisingly comfortable with his forehead pressed against the side of Derek’s neck. “You would have gotten away.”

“I’m stronger, faster than you and the hunters. And I know that if I can’t get away on my own, my pack will find me. I wanted — we wanted you to survive long enough for us to find you. It was genius of them to take you out to sea,” Derek admitted. “We kept catching faint scents of you, but we could never track it. We’d make it a few miles and then lose you completely. It wasn’t until Chris Argent found out abut Marcus’s boat that we figured it out.”

“He drove the car, right?” Stiles asked. “I thought I heard his voice.”

“Scott convinced me to ask for his help,” Derek said. “He’s been here a couple times to see you, but I haven’t let him in since you started to wake up. I didn’t want you seeing a hunter and…”

“Flipping out?”

Derek pulled back to look at Stiles, a faint smile on his face. “Something like that, yeah. How’re you doing?”

“Smashing,” Stiles said. “I’m so fabulous the club can’t even handle me right now.”

Derek stared at him.

“The song?”

“Yeah, I got that. But… did you seriously just quote Flo Rida?”

“I’ve kind of got a secret thing for—”

“If you say Flo Rida, I’m walking out. Right now.”

“Dance movies.”

Derek laughed. It was the first actual laugh Stiles thought he’d heard out of Derek in a year. He laughed so hard he had to let go of Stiles and press his hands to his side. “That is so much worse.”

“Shut up,” Stiles grumbled.

It took Derek a few more seconds to get control of himself. He leaned in, pressing his cheek to Stiles’s for just a heartbeat. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Stiles never thought he’d be comfortable with another man — or woman, or anyone, really — rubbing his face against him, but he found he felt content. He was pack. Derek was his Alpha. This was right.

“Question for question.”

Derek lifted an eyebrow, but gestured for him to continue.

“Answer: I’m okay. Kind of freaked out, because, you know, I got kidnapped by a human. But we haven’t had any creepy, supernatural beings trying to off us lately, so I figure I’m pretty safe from that. And I get the feeling you guys have this place locked down pretty hard for any non-supernatural beings. Now. Question: I’ve seen you around injured pack members before, but you’re never this intense. What’s going on?”

Derek was quiet for long enough that Stiles began to think he’d crossed some sort of line, but eventually Derek let out a harsh breath. “I’ve lost pack members before. I mean, kids took off and went missing for days or weeks and got into all kinds of trouble. Us older ones would have to go track them down and bring them home for our Alpha — my mom — to deal with. And, well, now Peter and I are the only Hales left.

“When any of us got hurt, we could usually make our way home or find a safe place to hide until someone could find us or we got strong enough to go on our own. Even this pack manages that pretty well, but you… They took you from me.” Derek’s voice was shaking. Stiles reached out without thinking, pressing his fingers against Derek’s jaw. Derek tilted his head into the touch, a furrow between his eyes. “I should have gone with you instead of sending the Betas, but I didn’t.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“And now you smell wrong.”

“It’s not like the vet comes equipped with a shower, dude.”

Derek actually rolled his eyes. “You need to start listening. That’s not what I said. You don’t smell like your dad and Beacon Hills and us. You smell like blood and salt water and antiseptics. It’s like…” He trailed off, looking somewhere over Stiles’s shoulder, that line back between his eyebrows. “Imagine you see your dad go off to work. You stop by the station later to visit him. Or to try to get him to arrest me again, whichever tickles your fancy. This time everyone points you to this man who isn’t your father, but he’s dressed like him and acts like him, but he doesn’t look like him. It’s like that, but worse. I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry,” Stiles said. “I kind of freaked out, which, you’d think I would know better. I mean, standard precautions would be battening down the hatches, padlocking the doors, and hiding in a corner somewhere, not taking off into the words.”

“We should probably have expected that. You’ve never done things the normal way.”

“Takes the fun out of things.”

“Talk to Jonathan about you moving into the loft with me.”

Stiles choked on his spit. He grumbled out a curse, holding onto his aching rib. “What?”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight until you’re healed. Either he lets me, and by extension the pack, move into your house, or you move in with me.”

Stiles was still gaping when Deaton came back to have him finish his walk.

 

The conversation with Jonathan went over about as well as he had expected, which is to say, not well at all. It didn’t help that Stiles wasn’t entirely certain he agreed with Derek, but the entire pack looked at him as though they expected his acquiescence, so he went along with it. It was his fault anyway. If he’d stayed with the pack, with Derek, instead of taking off, nobody would have gotten hurt and the hunter wouldn’t have gotten to him without going through the whole wolf pack first.

Besides, the constant thrum of panic beneath his skin faded when Derek was there. Stiles didn’t know what it was, if it was some sort of Alpha power, but he felt safer. Which was fortunate, as Stiles woke up screaming from nightmares probably three times a night.

This latest time, after two full weeks of recuperation in the back room, he sat up so fast he felt the deepest and longest of the cuts on his chest — so close to healing, finally with the promise of getting the stitches removed in the next few days — tear open and the now-familiar warmth of blood drip down his chest and back. He must have been screaming, or had started screaming at the unexpected pain, the content of the dream fading behind the pain.

Derek’s hand pressed against his forearm and the pain vanished. Stiles couldn’t even bring himself to be upset as he slumped against Derek’s chest.

“I’m bleeding on you,” Stiles said. He was breathing hard. Even something as simple as hyperventilation was enough to trigger panic attacks these days and he fought to take a single, deep breath to stave it off. Derek wrapped an arm loosely around Stiles’s waist. With his other hand, he rubbed circles into Stiles’s shoulder blade, one of the few uninjured places on his body.

“I don’t mind. Slow down, Stiles. Do you need me to breathe with you?”

Stiles shook his head. “I’m okay. I — oh my god that hurts. A lot. I’m okay.”

“Scott, get Deaton,” Derek said. He hardly raised his voice at all.

“It’s nothing. I don’t—” Stiles caught a glimpse of Derek’s expression when he turned his head and decided to swallow those particular words. “How many are out there?”

“Scott and Erica. I sent Boyd, Isaac, and the girls home to get some sleep. And Jonathan.”

“You sent my dad home?” Stiles echoed in disbelief.

“Scott, technically, did the sending.” Derek shifted slightly on the cot and Stiles bit back a whimper. Derek froze and rubbed his fingers on Stiles’s shoulder again. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“You need to stop saying you’re okay when you’re not. This is obviously not okay. Have you slept though the night in the last couple of weeks?”

“I haven’t slept through the night since Marcus took me,” Stiles snapped. He regretted the confession, but he was tired and he hurt and he just wanted a good night’s sleep. As nice as it was to have Derek’s arm around him — and that wasn’t a thought he remembered giving himself permission to have — sleeping was nicer.

“I’ll talk to Deaton about sending you home. As long as one of us is with you all the time, you should be safe enough.”

Stiles nodded. He found himself dozing against Derek’s shoulder, pain-free and warm. He probably should have told Derek to stop taking his pain from him, but it was nice to not hurt without the haze of drugs in his system. He startled awake when the door opened.

“Enough of that, Derek,” Deaton said, looking as though Scott had dragged him straight from bed. He’d taken to sleeping in another room in the office, this one equipped with an actual bed, although it was small. “I need to know if he feels pain when I assess him.”

“The answer is yes. And all over,” Stiles mumbled. Derek slipped off the cot and eased Stiles back down onto it. As soon as Derek removed his hand, the pain began flowing back. It came back slowly like water dripping into a cup. The more the cup filled, the more his body bent with the pain.

Deaton knelt beside him, fingers prodding gently. His eyebrows furrowed as he worked until he looked up at Stiles, dark eyes concerned. “I don’t like how these ones are healing, Stiles. It’s too slow, even for a human. Every time you rip your stitches or break open a wound, we run the risk of further infection.”

“I want to go home,” Stiles said. His voice cracked. “Can’t I just go home?”

“I’ll need to talk with your father,” Deaton said. He was rummaging through one of the nearby drawers. “It’s not going to be easy to care for you right now.”

“I’ll be there,” Derek interrupted.

Deaton sighed. “Derek, can I speak with you outside?” At Derek’s nod, Deaton came to Stiles’s side. “This is fentanyl. It’s a mild sedative, but it should keep you sleeping for most of the night. Can I give it to you?”

Stiles flinched when Deaton pulled the cap off the needle. “Do you have to?”

“I’d rather not,” Deaton admitted, “but you need to sleep. This isn’t something I, or any doctor, can fix for you. Your body needs to heal. If I could, I would find some way to keep you under for about three days, but that would leave you with serious side effects that your body isn’t capable of dealing with right now.”

“It’s okay,” Derek added, fingers brushing Stiles’s cheek. “As soon as Deaton is done, I’ll be right back here.”

A needle-prick shouldn’t have hurt, not after everything he’d already been though, but it still made him wince. The world faded as Deaton and Derek stepped out of room.

“Does he have any idea what you’re doing?” Deaton’s voice asked. It was muffled through the drugs and the door, but the anger came through loud enough to startle Stiles back into a little bit of coherency.

“I’m taking care of my pack, Deaton.”

“Your mother would—”

“My mother’s not here.”

“Exactly. And it’s my job to guide you. You need to tell him what you’re doing, Derek. He’s not a werewolf. You’ll just end up scaring him away.”

The fentanyl was kicking in and Stiles struggled to stay awake long enough to hear what they were saying. Their voices swam in and out.

“…Know he’s not … Lost another member of my pack … Can’t lose him.”

“…Alpha long enough … lose everyone.”


	7. The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I forgot to put this up, everyone! I'll put up chapter 8 on Friday to make up for it. This is a long one, too.

It was dark when Stiles woke up. The gashes in his chest had transitioned to a dull ache. It still hurt, but he was used to that. It was better than what he’d had before.

“How do you feel?” Deaton asked. He’d been sitting silently — creepily silently — in a chair nearby.

“Getting pretty tired of hearing people ask me that,” Stiles said.

“If you’re feeling up to it, Jonathan and Derek have convinced me you would be safe at your own home. So long as you have proper supervision, that is.”

“Home?” Stiles echoed. The pang of hope in his heart almost hurt more than his ribs. “I can go home?”

“With supervision. Derek, Scott, or your father will be with you at all times. And I do mean with you. When you sleep, when you bathe, when you eat. If you fall and one of them isn’t there to catch you, you could be seriously injured. I don’t know if your body will withstand getting hurt again.”

He held out a hand to help Stiles to his feet. Determined to show Deaton he was strong enough, Stiles accepted the hand and pulled himself up. He even managed to stay standing with minimal swaying, which was more than he’d managed in the past few days.

Deaton spoke while he unraveled the tight bandage around Stiles’s ribs. “They’ll be taking you there soon. The hunters have been taken care of — the Argents saw to that — but nobody else knew about your injury, or even that you have been missing.”

“That’s fine. Home is good. I love home.”

“There’s another thing I want to talk to you about.” Deaton had moved around behind him and Stiles couldn’t quite master the ability to turn his upper body far enough to see him.

“Is this about whatever you were yelling at Derek about yesterday?”

The vet’s hands stilled for a moment, but then continued. “Yes. How much did you hear?”

“Not much. Enough to confuse me.”

“I want you to be very careful with Derek Hale,” Deaton said. “He’s Pack,” and Stiles could hear the capital letter on that one, “more of a wolf than most. He grew up with werewolves, with their ways. And it’s not easy to switch that off, especially when you’re a member of his pack.”

“What? Do you think he’s going to hurt me?”

Deaton was silent for a long time while he finished rewrapping Stiles’s ribs. “No,” he said. “I’m worried you will hurt him.”

“Me?” Stiles asked. “What could I — Oh, great.”

Deaton had disappeared. Stiles’ hadn’t even heard him leave. He also hadn’t heard Peter slip through the door. He spotted him now, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What do you want, Peter?”

“You don’t stink of fear when you see me anymore,” Peter observed. “That’s good.”

“Yeah, well, once a crazy hunter beats you to a pulp, a sociopathic werewolf is suddenly just that much more mundane.”

Peter’s lips quirked in a smile and Stiles felt his heartbeat pick up just a little. Peter’s smile grew.

“So not all that mundane then. I’m not here to torture you, Stiles. I’m here to talk.”

“About what?”

“Derek.”

Stiles made a show of easing himself down into a chair. “I already had the talk with Deaton.”

“Mmm, not the talk I want to have with you. Derek and I may have our differences, but he’s still family. If my sister were here, it would be her place to have this talk with you, but as she’s not, it falls to me.”

Stiles lifted his eyebrows and waited.

Peter scoffed and pushed himself off the wall. He sat in the chair across from Stiles. “What do you know about wolves? Real wolves.”

“Four legs, bushy tails, not in California.”

Peter’s fist hit the metal table in the center of the room and Stiles jumped hard enough he felt a twinge of pain.

“Uh, packs. They live in packs formed by an alpha pair. They stake out territory and patrol it. They mark territory through scent… That’s all I know, really.”

“Scent,” Peter said, stalking closer to Stiles. He managed not to shrink back in his chair mostly because that movement hurt. He tapped Stiles’s cheek with a clawed fingernail. “Real wolves have scent glands. They mark what is theirs so other wolves know to stay away. What was it Deaton said? ‘More of a wolf than most’? Werewolves may not have scent glands, but you reek of him, Stiles. Any wolf comes within thirty feet of you will know you’ve been claimed. Do you know it?”

Stiles batted at Peter’s hand, but he had already backed up. “Get out, Peter.”

Peter shrugged and headed toward the door.

“Just remember: Wolves mate for life.”

The door shut before Stiles could even process what he’d said. He frowned and rubbed at his temples. His mind was slow. He could practically feel it clicking as he tried to process, to make the connections he knew were there.

They thought Derek liked him. That much was obvious enough. Stiles liked Derek; he had liked Derek for a long time. That wasn’t a question and also pretty much not an issue. But Derek had never shown any interest in Stiles before he went missing.

“Do you have a headache?”

Derek’s fingers brushed against the back of Stiles’s hand and he jumped, dislodging Derek’s touch before he could begin drawing the pain from him.

“I’m fine,” Stiles said.

“Did Peter do something?” Derek asked. “I saw him walk out—”

“Why do you care so much if I’m hurting?” Stiles asked. He glanced up at Derek and found him watching him silently, eyes inscrutable. “And don’t say it’s because I’m pack, because I’ve seen you with Scott and Isaac when they’ve been hurt. You worry about them and fuss over them, but I’ve never seen you so obsessed.”

“Stiles.”

“Derek. Come on. This is me you’re talking about. I held you up in a pool for hours to keep you from drowning or being sliced-’n’-diced by a kanima.”

“And you almost let me drown. Stand up.” Derek held out a hand. Stiles took it, rising slowly to his feet. “It’s not something I was going to bring up until you were feeling better.”

“I’m still a little bit drugged,” Stiles said, letting go of Derek’s hand to see if he could stand on his own. He only wavered a little bit. “I’m going to need you to be a little more clear on this one.”

“Last month we almost lost you. Those first few weeks, we didn’t know where you were. We didn’t know if you were still alive or even if the hunter still had you. I didn’t handle it well.”

“I was okay.”

“I didn’t know that,” Derek said. “I hardly slept for two weeks, Stiles. Not more than a few hours at a time, if that. We looked for you everywhere, but Marcus had taken you so far from us. Your scent was fading and we couldn’t find you.” Derek’s face was pinched with pain, more than Stiles had expected. His voice was rough. “I almost lost you.”

“I’m sorry,” Stiles said. He had to look away. “I didn’t… I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you.”

“What does that mean, then?” Stiles asked.

“If you were a werewolf, this would be easy. I mean… easier. There could still be complications if you came from another pack, territory, that kind of thing. My mom — the Alpha, but in my case, her — would have gone to your Alpha and arranged… essentially a courting period. Don’t laugh.”

Stiles managed to stop the laugh before it escaped. He made a strange choking sound instead.

“As a human, it makes things more difficult. It’s been done before, obviously, but there are more complications. Technically, I should talk to your father. But he might kill me.”

“He might, yeah. It’s okay, though. I mean — not him killing you. That’s not okay. You wanting to, uh, court me.”

Derek blinked at him. Then he stepped closer, pressing his face to the juncture of Stiles’s neck and exhaled sharply. Stiles moved hesitantly to put his arms around Derek’s waist.

He seemed to sag in Stiles’s arms, hands roving aimlessly across as much of Stiles’s back as he could, doing his best to avoid the bandages. “I want you somewhere safe,” Derek said, lips tickling the side of Stiles’s neck. “I want you at the loft with me.”

“You’re already coming to Dad’s with me. Or Deaton said you were, anyway. You are, right?”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Derek stepped back and just as Stiles was about to protest, the door opened, revealing his dad and Deaton. Jonathan carried a large bag marked ‘Beacon Hills Animal Clinic,’ filled with gauze and other medical supplies. Stiles could hear pills rattling when he moved.

“Ready to go, kiddo?”

“Definitely,” Stiles said. Derek moved into position behind his shoulder, one hand hovering protectively over Stiles’s injured rib.

“You’re going to have to lay down in the back of the car. Derek and Scott will help you sneak in and then you’re on house arrest until you’re healed.”

“Do I get an anklet?” Stiles asked.

“You pull an act like this again, I’m chaining you to the front door,” Jonathan said.

Stiles got into the car without complaint. It was dark; the glowing green numbers on the dashboard said 4:12 when he crawled into the back seat, the button-down Jonathan had brought him hanging from his shoulders like loose skin.

The ride was excruciating. The seat was too small for him to stretch out and the blanket they’d thrown over him was stifling in the summer heat. Derek had taken the seat beside him and did what he could to make Stiles more comfortable, but when he’d reached for Stiles’s hand to take some of the pain away, Stiles had pulled back. He didn’t care that it wasn’t as painful for Derek as it was for him. He didn’t want Derek taking any more of his pain than he had to. This was tolerable. Excruciating, but tolerable.

Scott and Derek helped him through the door as his father kept a lookout. The lights were all out, even the ones on the squad car and in the house. He wasn’t allowed upstairs to his own bedroom, but his own blankets and pillows had been brought down to the guest room. It wasn’t quite right, but he still sighed in relief when he saw them.

Scott gave him a careful hug just inside the doorway. “I’ve got to go back home. Mom’s been paranoid ever since you got kidnapped, so I’m under strict orders to go back as soon as you got home safe. Let Derek and your dad take care of you, okay?”

“You know me.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I’m telling you to let them take care of you. If you get hurt again, Derek might go crazy.”

A low growl came from behind them, but it sounded almost amused. Stiles wasn’t sure what had become of his life that he could differentiate amused growls from angry ones. Even so, Scott stepped back.

“Do you boys want anything to eat?” Jonathan called from the kitchen.

“I’m headed home,” Scott said, moving for the door. “I’ll see you later, Sheriff.”

“Be safe, Scott,” Jonathan called.

“I just want to shower and go to bed,” Stiles said, answering his dad’s question after Scott closed the front door.

Jonathan stuck his head out of the kitchen, a box of cereal in his hand. “Do you want me to help?”

“Derek can,” Stiles said. “He’ll hear if I fall or need help.”

“I’ve got work in a few hours, but I can call in if I need to. Will you be okay?”

“Go to work,” Stiles said. “I’m just going to sleep for a week.”

Jonathan nodded. He looked skeptical, but he retreated back into the kitchen. Stiles was grateful. He knew his dad was just trying to be helpful, but he really just wanted everything to go back to normal.

Stiles turned toward the first floor bathroom, but Derek stopped him as he reached the door. “Stiles.”

“Huh?”

“Have you…” Derek hesitated. “Have you had a chance to see yourself yet?”

“See myself?” Stiles suddenly felt sick. He’d caught dull reflections in metal, but he’d been too busy walking or breathing or choking down food to really see. If Derek looked this worried… “How bad is it?”

“Pretty bad.”

Stiles scrabbled for the door handle. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

He managed to pull the door open and stumble into the bathroom. At first Stiles thought the yellowish tinge to his skin was from the harsh light, but when he tilted his head and the color didn’t change, he began to understand.

He was a mottled mess, bruises fading to yellow and brown. The right side of his face, where he’d lost the tooth, was the worst. Some of it was still purple along his jawline. His lip had been split in three places and although it didn’t break open when he spoke anymore, he could still see the cuts. There were deep purple circles under his eyes and his cheeks were gaunt, even though Deaton had been forcing him to eat as much as he could stomach for the past two weeks.

Stiles tried to yank his shirt off, biting back a groan as his body rebelled against the movement. Derek appeared in the mirror behind him.

“Stop.”

“I have to see.”

Derek rested his chin on Stiles’s shoulder, closing his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I didn’t — I didn’t think to look. I knew there were bandages. I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t think… Derek, I have to see.”

“Okay,” Derek said, opening his eyes. “Okay. But let me help.”

He came around in front of Stiles, blocking his view of the mirror, and started unbuttoning the shirt so slowly Stiles almost pushed him away and did it himself, but he knew his own movements would be so clumsy it would take longer. “You’re sure?” Derek asked as he slipped the last button free.

“Yes.”

Stiles wasn’t sure. He’d seen the swaths of white dressings across his chest dozens of times in the past few days, but he hadn’t seen what lay beneath them. He’d been unconscious or sleeping every time Deaton changed his bandages, and he was starting to think that hadn’t been a coincidence.

Derek pushed the fabric off Stiles’s shoulders and let it fall to the ground. He twisted his lips and stepped aside. Stiles gasped. The wrap around his ribs covered most of his chest, but the rest of him was as covered in bruises as his face. The defined bruised lines, the cane. The thin red lines, some of them stitched closed, the whip. They criss-crossed his chest like sick hashtags.

“I need to see,” Stiles whispered. The words broke apart in his mouth, but Derek understood. Derek’s fingers found the end of the wrap and began to unwind it. His breaths were uneven, eyes darting back up to Stiles’s to check if he still wanted to see.

The bruise covered a solid six or seven inches on his side, curving around to nearly his sternum. When he turned to see it on his back, he found it disappeared beneath the long strips of gauze covering the burns.

Derek didn’t even wait for Stiles to ask, easing the gauze free at the top of his neck and peeling it down. It took him several minutes to free all of it, and Stiles had to brace himself on the counter, fighting back tears. It didn’t hurt, not any more than it had before, but the sight sickened him. He’d known he was beat up, but he had no idea it was this bad. No wonder it had been Derek, Scott, and his dad at the end. Nobody would want to see this. It was one thing to stand at the bedside of somebody who might be dying; it was another thing to see a living person like this.

“Are you ready?”

He couldn’t answer. He turned his back to the mirror and found himself face-to-face with Derek. Derek looked at him for a few silent seconds, swiping his thumb beneath Stiles’s eyes as though brushing away tears that hadn’t quite fallen yet. Derek cupped Stiles’s cheeks and leaned in to kiss him. He pressed their lips together for a moment and then pulled back, kissing him once more on the forehead.

“None of this matters, Stiles. Whatever you see, it doesn’t matter. You will heal and even if you’re covered in scars, you survived. Remember that for me. Are you ready?”

“No,” Stiles whispered. “I can’t… It hurt so bad. If it looks like it felt…”

“I’ll cover the mirror while you shower. You can look whenever you want.”

“I have to.”

Derek put his hands on Stiles’s waist. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

Stiles craned his neck to see. He choked on his own breath when he saw. Most of the burns had healed into shiny, new flesh, but there were places that hadn’t. The one down his spine, the reason he had so much trouble turning and stretching, was still so deep he almost thought he could see charred muscle tissue. But Marcus hadn’t been satisfied with that. He’d run the sharp edge of the rod along Stiles’s ribs, creating a sick Grey’s Anatomy skeletal digram on his back. Beneath that, Stiles could see the lines from the whip.

“How many painkillers have I been on?” Stiles asked. He’d taken what Deaton gave him without question, choosing hazy oblivion over pain.

“More than is safe,” Derek said. “He didn’t want you to know; he dosed you in most of your meals, plus the morphine, and whatever he gave you in pills. He was afraid it would affect your early recovery if you knew how bad your injuries were.”

Stiles touched the marks on his other side. Two little dots repeated again and again on his skin. The cattle prod, probably. Funny how something like that didn’t seem to hurt at all now.

“Deaton said something about internal bleeding? Wh—what was wrong with me?”

“Concussion, bruising, lacerations, burns, malnutrition, dehydration, bruised ribs, bruising of the internal organs, and internal bleeding.” Derek rattled the list off like he was reading ingredients on a cereal box. “It stopped on its own after a few hours, but that was part of the reason he kept you so heavily sedated the first few days. He’s good at patching up werewolves and pets, but he’s not a human surgeon. There’s no way we could have kept you there if you’d started bleeding again, and I can’t protect you in a hospital, even with Melissa running interference.”

“I… Oh, god.”

Derek’s arm curved around his waist and Stiles finally saw how carefully he’d been fitting himself around burns and gashes. “Ssh, Stiles, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I almost died,” Stiles gasped, forehead pressed to Derek’s shoulder. “I almost died. Dad. I almost left Dad alone.”

“The pack would have taken care of him,” Derek said. “We would have made sure he was okay. Let’s just get you to bed. This was a lot to take in at once.”

Stiles shook his head. “Shower. I don’t feel clean.”

“Okay,” Derek said, drawing carefully away. He leaned around the shower curtain and started the water. “But I’m staying in here. You can barely stand on your own as it is.”

“But… I’ll be…”

“Naked?” Derek guessed. He grinned. “I’m a werewolf, Stiles. We don’t worry about nudity nearly as much as you humans do.”

“That explains why you never wear a shirt,” Stiles grumbled.

“No, that was for you. You looked when I didn’t have a shirt on. I kept hoping you’d get interested. And besides,” Derek caught the waistband of Stiles’s sweatpants in his fingers. “I was there when Deaton cut you out of your clothes. You’ve got nothing I haven’t already seen. Okay?”

Stiles tried to come up with some comment about how it was only fair if Stiles saw what Derek had seen, but he was too tired to make it all fall into place. He nodded.

To his credit, Derek hardly seemed interested in anything inappropriate, helping Stiles step out of the last of his clothes and lifting him over the lip of the shower and tugging the curtains closed. When Stiles dared glance toward him, Derek had taken a seat on the closed toilet, head tilted, but not looking directly at him.

The water was only lukewarm, but it was the first shower he’d had in over a month. Despite Derek’s assertions that there had been baths at Deaton’s, he was pretty sure he still smelled terrible. Washing his hair was far beyond his current strength, so he stood under the water and hoped that the worst of the blood washed out.

He’d just shut off the water when he heard Jonathan’s voice. “Stiles?”

“I’m in here!”

Footsteps came closer to the door. “Derek?”

“Me too,” Derek answered.

Stiles thought he heard his father sigh in relief. “I’ve got to go to work, kiddo. You sure you‘re okay?”

“Yeah, Dad. I’m just going to go to sleep.”

“There’s food in the kitchen if you get hungry. I think Melissa’s method of coping with all this was to cook.”

Stiles laughed. He only barely had to force the sound. “We’ll be fine. Have a good night at work.”

“Will do. Derek?”

“Yes?”

“You keep him safe while I’m gone.”

“Nobody will touch him,” Derek promised.

“Good. Love you, Stiles.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Derek pushed the curtain aside and handed Stiles a towel as the footsteps headed toward the front door. As soon as Stiles wrapped the towel around himself, Derek lifted him from the tub and set him on the floor, burying his face against Stiles’s neck and breathing deeply.

“Better.”

“I thought you said I didn’t smell bad,” Stiles teased. He touched Derek’s hair, still a little wary that he was even allowed to do this.

“More like you,” Derek said, breathing in one more time. “Let’s get you to bed. Wound care time.”

Stiles barely managed to get dressed on his own. He fell asleep lying on his stomach with Derek rubbing ointment into the burns on his back.


	8. Alpha-Dominance Thing

Stiles woke up the next morning, finally with the sun on the right side of the horizon, to find Derek wrapped loosely around him. His head was pillowed on Derek’s chest with Derek’s leg thrown over both of his. Derek’s hand rested low on Stiles’s back, away from the disgusting burns.

Derek’s eyes cracked open. “How do you feel?”

“As long as I don’t move and only barely breathe, nothing hurts.”

“The painkillers are wearing off. If you feel any symptoms of withdrawal, you need to tell me. Sickness, vomiting, dizziness, irritability. Deaton had you on a lot of stuff.

Stiles ignored him; he had a much better idea than vomiting and irritability. He took a deep breath and pushed himself up. He held himself there for a second and then flopped back down on Derek a couple of inches further up his chest. Derek grunted in his ear, arm holding him in place.

“How does someone your size weigh so much? Jesus, Stiles.”

Stiles pressed his lips to Derek’s throat and Derek’s arm tightened just this side of painful. This was mean. Stiles knew this was mean, but he was relatively certain Derek wouldn’t just drop him off the edge of the bed. Probably. He kissed his way down the column of Derek’s throat.

“What are you doing?”

“Kissing you.”

He figured he was probably doing a little more than that. Werewolves were notoriously touchy about their necks, Derek more so than most. It was probably an Alpha-dominance thing. An incredibly hot Alpha-dominance thing as Derek actually writhed beneath him.

“Stiles.”

Stiles grinned, knowing Derek would feel it against his neck. “Yes?”

“You’re an asshole. I can’t even touch you without hurting you.”

And that was something Stiles was not going to let put a damper on his mood. He kissed his way up to almost Derek’s earlobe and then back down. He brushed his lips over the pulse point before he bared his teeth and nipped at Derek’s neck.

Derek’s whole body shuddered, his hands grabbing Stiles’s hips almost hard enough to hurt.

“What was that?” Stiles asked, pulling away enough to look at Derek. The movement pulled at the burns on his back, but he decided that Derek’s reaction was infinitely more important that than the pain.

“That,” Derek said, “is something you definitely should not do with your father in the next room.”

“Is that some kind of werewolf kink?” Stiles asked. “Because I am totally doing that again.”

Derek growled low in his throat and flipped them over. He kept Stiles tight to his chest, easing him down and making sure he wasn’t in pain before he leaned down to kiss him.

“Just wait until you’re feeling better,” Derek said in his ear, warm air tickling Stiles’s skin. He could get used to this kind of attention.

“Promise or threat?” Stiles asked, catching a handful of Derek’s shirt.

“Both.”

Stiles leaned into Derek’s touch, but the movement put too much strain on one of the healing cuts on his back and he felt the skin tear open. Derek retreated before he even realized he was in pain, turning him carefully onto his stomach.

Derek kissed a spot of bare skin at the base of Stiles’s neck. “I’m sorry,” he said, tugging the bandage aside to see the damage.

“It’s okay,” Stiles mumbled, face pressed into the pillow. “It’s my fault.”

“I hurt you,” Derek said, smoothing the bandage back into place.

“Are you forgetting who started all this?” Stiles asked, turning his head so he could breathe and finding Derek staring at him. “Because I definitely bit you first. And I’m a dumbass most of the time, so it’s not like — Hey!”

Derek flipped him over again, even more careful than before, and brought his face within inches of Stiles’s. “You are not a dumbass.”

“Okay, okay. Not a dumbass. Got it.”

Derek kissed him again, careful and slow. He rasped his teeth against the uninjured corner of Stiles’s lips and then pulled back. “Let’s get you up before your dad gets curious.”

Getting up and getting dressed for the day was actually a lot harder than Stiles had expected. Some part of him had thought that he would just magically get better once they let him go home. Apparently that wasn’t quite how it worked. Now that Deaton wasn’t keeping him dosed, the pain was no longer just a dull ache beneath his skin. It was there and Stiles would not let Derek take the pain.

By the time he managed to throw on clean clothes, he consented to letting Derek button his shirt, the better part of half an hour had gone by and he was ready to go back to bed again, but he let Derek help him into the kitchen. Being as he could see the kitchen from the doorway to the guest room, he had never thought the kitchen was that far away, but walking down the hallway was enough to leave him winded.

Jonathan was sitting at the kitchen table, picking at some eggs. He watched their progress with his lips pressed together. When Stiles managed to look up from the floor — it had the disturbing habit of not being where he expected it to be — Jonathan had the edge of the table in a grip that probably would have broken something more fragile than solid oak.

“Morning, kiddo,” Jonathan said, his voice a little too casual.

“Morning, Dad,” Stiles said, flinching as Derek helped him down into a chair.

Jonathan looked at them for a few seconds longer, then turned back to his eggs. “I don’t know if I would have let Derek sleep with you if I’d known you were in love with him.”

Stiles choked on his spit and started coughing. He waved a hand in front of his face. “What?”

Jonathan shrugged. “Just don’t hurt yourself. And Derek, if you hurt him in any way, I will shoot you. A couple times.”

To Stiles’s complete embarrassment, Derek stepped closer to him as though Jonathan’s words had been enough to allow him to completely disregard personal space, which Derek had enough trouble with on a good day.

“I won’t.”

There was a strength of promise in those words. It didn’t sound like the same sort of empty “I’ll never hurt you” that Stiles heard in most relationships. Stiles made a note to ask him about it later. When his dad wasn’t watching him like, well, like a sheriff.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Breakfast is still hot. I’ve got to head back into the office for a few hours. Melissa is going to be here soon to take a look at how you’re healing.”

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh. Well, when you can lie a bit more convincingly than that, I’ll tell Melissa she doesn’t need to show up.”

Jonathan dumped his plate in the sink and headed for the door, kissing the top of Stiles’s head as he passed. “I’ll be back later.”

Stiles caught his wrist as he walked past. “Dad?”

“Yeah, son?”

Stiles swallowed as Derek moved into the kitchen, giving them some semblance of privacy. “I’m sorry. And thank you. For coming to get me.”

Jonathan leaned down to hug him a few seconds longer than he really needed to. “You don’t ever need to apologize for this, Stiles. Ever. This will never be your fault.”

“But I scared you.”

Jonathan crouched down beside the chair, looking straight into Stiles’s eyes, voice quiet. “Yeah, you did. But I don’t care, because I could so easily be standing between two graves right now. If it had taken the pack much longer to find you, I would be. You’re alive, Stiles, and the man who did this to you is dead. I don’t care if it’s justice or retribution or vengeance. You’re safe.” He took a deep breath. “The night Derek brought you back to me, you were so limp I thought he was carrying your body. I don’t care that I was scared or that we didn’t exactly follow due process. You’re okay and you’re home. That is what matters.”

The corners of Stiles’s eyes stung with an unexpected rush of tears. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, hearing his voice shake. “I just… I should have known better. I panicked.”

“It’s okay. You’re home now.”

Stiles wiped at his eyes. “Sorry. Go to work.”

Jonathan smiled and ruffled at Stiles’s hair. “Take care, kid.”

Derek at least had the good sense to wait until his dad closed the door before saying, “You know he was lying, right?”

Stiles nodded, stomach sinking. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Derek set a heaping plate of eggs in front of him and Stiles grimaced. His appetite had disappeared with his dad. He tried to push the plate away, but Derek blocked it with his hand. “Eat.”

“I’m not—”

“I don’t care.”

Stiles glared at him, but Derek only raised his eyebrows. Huffing, Stiles tugged the plate back and took a hesitant bite. He made it through two full plates before he realized Derek was filling his plate as soon as he emptied it.

“What are you doing?” Stiles asked.

Derek shrugged, holding out the pan again. When Stiles shook his head, he set it back down on the stove. “Making sure you eat.” Stiles raised his eyebrows, doing his best to copy Derek’s favorite expression. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but Derek laughed, looking almost sheepish. If a wolf could look like a sheep. “It’s a pack thing. When a wolf is injured, the other wolves bring it food, groom it… They protect their pack members. It’s kind of ingrained in me. It’s how we always did it when I was a kid.”

Stiles was starting to get used to Derek offering up that kind of personal information. Before he could decide if he was going to prod for more information or let it be, somebody opened the front door and Stiles flinched.

“It’s Melissa,” Derek said, holding out his hand to help Stiles to his feet.

“Stiles?” Melissa’s voice called.

“In the kitchen,” Stiles said.

Melissa swooped to his side, wrapping her arms around him like she wanted to squeeze him to her, but knowing better. “Oh, my poor boy. I stopped by Deaton’s a couple times, but you were out. How are you feeling?”

He thought better of lying to a nurse, especially this one. “I still hurt a lot. It takes me a long time to walk anywhere. Or sit. Or stand. Or lay down.”

Melissa fished out two pink pills. Stiles didn’t ask what they were and took them dry. “Let’s get you to lay down. I want to take a look at your back.”

Between Derek and Melissa, it was a faster trip to the bedroom. They eased him down on the bed, Melissa tugging the blankets back and waiting until he was settled with Derek at his other side.

“Believe it or not, now that your wounds have finally started healing, it’s going pretty fast. Not Scott fast, but fast. Have there been any signs of infection?”

“I haven’t smelled anything,” Derek said. “Blood and dead tissue, but nothing else.”

Melissa made a pleased sound and began easing the tape from Stiles’s skin. He found himself soothed to sleep by her gentle touch. He realized he was dozing and jolted himself awake, but Melissa rubbed her hand on his arm, like his mother used to do when he was sick with the flu and miserable.

“Go to sleep if you want, Stiles. I’m just going to take a look at that head wound first.”

He didn’t even notice her touching his hair.

 

Stiles woke to darkness and silence. He stirred, moving to push himself up from the bed, but his arms wouldn’t move. He tried to kick his legs free of the blankets, but he couldn’t.

He was cold. It was a bone-deep chill that even the warmth of the blankets couldn’t shake. He blinked, hoping to focus his eyes in the dim light glowing from beneath the door. Maybe Melissa had given him something to help him sleep and it had some sort of weird sleep paralysis side effect. He definitely would not be taking that again. He called out to Derek, but his voice stuck in his throat.

Finally his shoulders lifted from the bed and some of the blankets fell to the side. It wasn’t the dark green comforter he’d expected; they were gray and black and white and soft. They felt like fur against his skin.

Stiles managed to lift himself onto his elbows and got the first good look at the blankets. His stomach heaved. He screamed through his gritted teeth. Wolf pelts, too large to be from real wolves.

“No!” Stiles shouted, finally getting his arms and legs to move. He threw himself from the bed onto bare floor.

The door slammed open and Marcus stood there, blood dripping from a gaping wound on his throat. He had a whip in his hand, the tip leaving trails across the dusty floor.

“Don’t you like your presents?”

Stiles shoved himself against the wall, tucking his back into the corner. “You’re dead. Isaac killed you.”

Marcus laughed. It was a strange, whispery sound as air whistled through his torn trachea. “Said he ripped my throat out, didn’t he? Harder to kill a hunter than that.”

The whip sliced through the air, tip scoring a shallow cut just below Stiles’s eye. He flinched back further, arm lifting to protect his face.

“Please.”

“You know what you have to do,” Marcus said, slow steps bringing him closer. “What do you think of werewolves, Stiles?”

“No!”

“Stiles!”

“What do you think of werewolves, Stiles?”

“Please! Please, don’t. Please.”

“Stiles!”

That voice didn’t belong to Marcus. The whip descended, but a hand yanked him away. Stiles tried to fight free, striking at whomever the hand belonged to. He couldn’t move. Something was holding him down.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“Stiles, it’s me. It’s me. It’s okay.”

That voice broke through the panic in Stiles’s mind, through the blood on his cheek and the stinging pain of the whip.

“It’s me. I’ve got you. You need to stop fighting me. Can you lay still if I let go?”

He went limp. “Derek?”

Derek let out a harsh breath, releasing Stiles and collapsing on the bed beside him. “It’s me.”

Stiles curled into a ball against Derek’s side. Derek bent around him, chin resting on the top of Stiles’s head.

“You’re okay,” Derek said, fitting himself snugly against Stiles’s unyielding body. “I’m here.”

Whatever Melissa had given him must still have been working, because he only felt a dull ache, even curled up as as he was. His hand hurt too, gripping the blue-gray of Derek’s shirt so tightly his nails dug into his palm even through the cloth.

Derek didn’t try to stop him, didn’t ask what he’d dreamt, didn’t make him relive it.

“Your dad called,” Derek said at last, voice rumbling out of his chest and finally beginning to ease the knot of pain and cold around Stiles’s heart. “Something came up. He’s out of town for the next few days.”

Stiles nodded, biting at his lips for one more spark of pain to keep him focused on Derek and not the dream. He shivered at the memory of soft wolf pelts on his skin.

“Come here,” Derek said, pulling him closer. “You’re okay.”

Stiles choked on his answer, not even sure what he was going to say if he’d managed to form anything other than a keening sob.

“He can’t touch you, Stiles. He’s dead. Isaac saw him die. Argent watched hunters bury him.” Derek let him lay there, eyes squeezed shut so tight he saw starbursts, and ran his fingers up and down Stiles’s neck. “Growing up, my Alpha was incredibly powerful. Talia — Mom — was so strong that the other packs came to her for advice. She could transform into a full wolf. She had mastered powers the rest of us couldn’t even dream of.”

Derek’s fingers hesitated on the back of Stiles’s neck, fingers tapping specific points, but he went back to the gentle touches.

“She could take memories from you as though you’d never had them. Not the same as pulling memories to the surface, like Peter. Even he’s not strong enough. Maybe, if she’d lived, Laura would have learned, but she was so young when — after the fire.”

It got easier to relax as Derek talked. He could loosen his grip on Derek’s shirt, uncurl further, press his face against Derek’s throat and breathe. He didn’t have the same sense of smell as the werewolves, but there was something soothing about the subtle sense that was Derek.

“You said something when you were talking to my dad.”

“What part?”

“About not hurting me.”

Derek sighed, cupping the back of Stiles’s head around the mostly-healed wound at the back of his skull. “It’s the way things work for us. I can’t promise — accidents have happened, especially with humans. And it’s always your choice, ultimately.”

“Care to vague that one up a little bit for me?”

“I wanted to wait until you were feeling better. It’s a confusing conversation.”

Stiles pushed himself up as far as he could before he started hurting. “Enlighten me.”

Derek rolled his eyes and sat up, helping Stiles to sit beside him. “Werewolves almost always mate for life once the bond forms. My father died when I was young and my mother never took another mate, even though she was more than eligible. It’s not like it is with humans. There wouldn’t have been any reason for her not to. Nobody but Laura would have inherited unless she lost a challenge, but we don’t find new mates. We can move on, but once we’ve formed the mating bond—”

“Mating bond? Is this like some kind of weird sex thing?”

“Stiles.” Derek waited until he was sure Stiles was done speaking. “No, it’s not a weird sex thing. What kind of TV have you been watching?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“No, probably not. The bond forms over years. It’s not like checking a box or handcuffing—”

“Handcuffing?”

“—yourselves together. It gives the humans time to understand what they’re getting into. And the werewolf, too, really. We fall in and out of love the same way humans do, it’s just that when we find our mate, we’ve found our mate. And the mate-for-life part of it is only on the werewolf’s side. It doesn’t affect you.”

“Would I have to get the bite?”

“If we finalize the bind, it’s always an option. Until then, I won’t let anyone bite you. Adjusting to the bond and the bite at the same time is too much; there were rules against it. Any werewolf who took a human mate was forbidden to bite them until the bond was complete. I… It turned out badly more often than not.”

There was something in Derek’s voice that made Stiles look at him, some long-lost pain, but Derek gazed somewhere over his head. As much as that hesitation niggled at him, Stiles couldn’t bring himself to ask yet.

“So Scott and Allison…?”

“He’s too young,” Derek said, shaking his head. “It takes time and the youngest mated pair I’ve ever seen were both nineteen, and they’d been chosen as mates since childhood.”

“You guys had arranged marriages?”

“If things hadn’t gone so badly with the Argents, I probably would have been mated to Sarah at twenty.”

“Sarah?”

Derek laughed. Stiles expected the slight movement to hurt, but he found it soothing. “Don’t be jealous. Her aunt was Alpha of a strong pack. Talia wanted to secure our territory. Laura would inherit, Cora was too young. I was an easy middle child to marry off, with enough pull to bring her to us, but not so much that it was impossible if me going with them was a requirement of the marriage. Besides, Talia was in a hurry to get me settled down one way or another. I got into a lot of trouble as a kid.”

Stiles didn’t know how to respond to that, so he said, “Where do you think my dad went?”

“Allison called,” Derek said. Stiles frowned at the non-sequitur. “Her dad’s gone out of town for a couple days.”

“The hunters.”

“That’d be my guess. Your dad can’t arrest them without pressing charges, and that would mean explaining why the sheriff didn’t report his own son missing and why he took you to a vet. The hunters have their own justice.”

“You said—”

“Marcus is dead,” Derek said, cutting him off before he could work himself up. “But there were ten hunters in that house. Marcus is the only one who died.”

That probably was not as comforting as Derek had meant it to be.

Derek seemed to realize it, catching Stiles’s chin in his fingers and leaning in to kiss him. “They’re never going to touch you. Until I hear from Argent himself that they’ve been dealt with, I am not letting anybody but pack, your dad, Melissa, and Chris Argent near you. Nobody is going to take you from us.”

Stiles tried to believe him. Derek wouldn’t let anyone take him while he was alive, but it wasn’t impossible to subdue a werewolf, even one as powerful as Derek.

“You went through ten hunters for me?” Stiles asked instead.

“Technically I went through a wall for you. The rest of the pack went through ten hunters for you.”

“That is… strangely romantic,” Stiles said.

Derek laughed. “Come on. Let’s get you something to eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: In Which Crap Is Made Up About Derek's Heritage
> 
> So. My take on the werewolf mating bonds is heavily influenced by the fact that my first slash-ship was Kirk/Spock and the whole Vulcan mating bond thing. I know fandom consensus seems to be bite-and-done, but alas. It's not to be. Last chapter will be up sometime Monday!
> 
> Because I'm sure I'll forget on Monday: Thank you all for reading this and reviewing (I'm sorry I stopped responding personally to your reviews, but know that I read them and loved them!) and if you read Steve/Bucky Avengers fic, my next fic will be that and should be up soon!


	9. Inhuman

The days passed. That was all Stiles could say about them. They passed slowly and sometimes painfully. His body healed. The day Jonathan called to tell them he would be out of town a few days longer, three days after the wolf pelt nightmare, Stiles managed a full lap around the first-floor interior of the house without stopping or getting out of breath and Derek allowed him to move back into his own bedroom on the second floor.

Derek never dared stray far from Stiles’s side. It didn’t take much to trigger a panic attack those first few days. Melissa learned not to slam the door when she walked in. Derek learned to read Stiles better than anyone except maybe Scott; he seemed to be able to sense when the panic crawled up Stiles’s throat and twisted, cutting off his breath. Derek learned how to catch him before it overwhelmed him and left him curled up beneath a table or in a corner.

He got stronger faster than Melissa expected. By the end of his first week home, all but the worst of the injuries had healed. The lash across the diagonal of his chest still had a scab, but the edges were no longer raw to the touch and it didn’t break open and bleed every time he moved. The wound left a white seam as it knit itself together. His skull had healed and the dizziness had faded. The worst burn on his back was fresh, pink, shiny skin that pulled too tight when he turned, but it didn’t hurt.

Stiles thought everything would be okay until the night after Melissa pronounced she no longer needed to come by every day. Storms had never bothered him before. Sharp cracks of thunder woke him up or particularly nasty winds had him Googling the number of tornadoes that touched down in the county in the past ten years.

Things changed, apparently.

It had been a steady drizzle of rain when they went to bed, Stiles curled in the now-familiar safety of Derek’s arms. Somewhere during the night, the storm rolled in. The first crack of thunder came just after four in the morning and Stiles snapped awake, barely conscious of Derek’s voice in his ear and the hand against the back of his neck.

The next crash of thunder came a few seconds later and Stiles threw himself from the bed. Derek followed, hand outstretched. Stiles saw him. He knew it was Derek standing there, waiting for him to take his hand. But something in Stiles screamed that he was wrong, that this was a monster, that he wasn’t safe here.

He bolted for the door. Derek caught him at the top of the stairs, wrapping his arms around Stiles’s waist and pulling him back.

“Stiles, what’s wrong?”

“Let me go!” Stiles shouted, flailing around and digging an elbow into Derek’s side. Derek’s arms loosened enough for Stiles to wiggle free and he managed to make it down the stairs before Derek caught up with him again, standing between him and the door.

“Stiles, whatever’s going on… It’s not real. You know it’s not real. Stiles, look at me.”

Monster. Creature. Dirty. Deserves to die.

“Please, Stiles,” he said, holding a hand out again. It was covered in blood, dripping from his claws and onto his feet. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll call Deaton or Melissa.”

Werewolves aren’t human. They’re nightmares. They need to be hunted, eradicated. Not human. Monster.

Stiles backed away. The back door. If he was fast enough—. Derek was in front of him again, grabbing Stiles’s wrists. The claws dug into his skin and Stiles yanked away, clutching his arms to his chest.

“Don’t touch me!”

Derek recoiled. The motion gave him enough space to squeeze past Derek and run for the door into the rain. He didn’t know where he was running, just that he had to get away from the werewolves. Evil. Creature. Monster. Inhuman. The rain was cold, but Stiles hardly felt it. He was still out of shape, but finally strong enough to run.

He ran through the rain until he heard somebody call his name. It was female, familiar. He caught sight of the back of a head, rain-drenched and red.

“Lydia!”

Lydia spun to face him. She ran toward him, holding out her arms for him and he went to her, hugging her tight. “Oh thank god, Stiles. What are you doing? Derek is frantic—”

“You need to stay away from him, Lydia. We all do. They’re not—”

“Did he do something?” Lydia asked, pulling away and looking at him. “God, you must be freezing. They’ll be here in a minute. Did you fight?”

“No,” Stiles said. It was hard to keep up with what she was saying, but he was cold; his teeth chattered as he tried to talk. “Lydia, they’re monsters. They need to be stopped.”

“You need to slow down, Stiles. I can hardly understand you.”

“They’re evil!”

“What are you talking about?” Lydia asked. She sounded exasperated and put her hands on her hips. She probably wasn’t much warmer than him, dressed in shorts and a wet sweatshirt probably thrown over her pajamas. “Stiles, what’s going on? Did you have a nightmare?”

“Lydia, please, we have to go. They’ll be here soon!”

Even through the rain, Stiles heard the pounding footsteps. He spun toward them, pushing Lydia behind him. She didn’t understand. He would have to protect her. Somehow.

They were there, the whole pack, slowing from a dead run to a slow jog and then finally to a halt. Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Derek. Scott. Scott was one of them. Stiles had forgotten. How had he forgotten?

“He’s not making sense,” Lydia said, trying to move around him. Stiles stepped with her, blocking her path. She stopped with a frustrated groan. “Stiles! Come on, it’s okay!”

“You said he doesn’t remember you?” Scott asked, looking at Derek, who stood at the front of the little arrowhead of werewolves.

“I think he remembers me,” Derek said, eyes flaring red for a brief second. Blood. Death. “He never asked who I was, just ran. He won’t let me touch him.”

Scott nodded and walked forward a few steps. “Hey, Stiles?”

“Don’t touch us!”

Scott stopped, holding up his hands. Claws. Dripping Blood. “Okay. We won’t. How about you let Lydia out from behind you? Allison’s got her car up the block. She’ll be warmer there. We can talk.”

“What are you going to do to her?”

“Nothing, man. Let’s talk. You and me. Derek, Isaac, everybody will back off. Lydia can go with Allison. The rest of us will stay right out here.”

Lydia put her hand on Stiles’s shoulder. “I’ll go sit with Allison,” she said. “Just me and her. I’ll be okay. They won’t touch me with a hunter there, right?”

Allison was a hunter. She would keep Lydia safe, even if neither of them understood why. Allison was smart. She would trust him.

“Stay where you are,” Stiles said, pointing to the pack. Heads nodded. Fangs. Ripping. Tearing. Monsters. Inhuman. “Go ahead.”

Lydia squeezed his shoulder and began backing away. “It’ll be okay, Stiles. We’ll figure it out.”

Scott waited until Lydia was out of sight and took a slow step forward. When Stiles backed up half a dozen steps, he stopped, hands raised again. Claws. Dripping. Blood.

“Can I come closer? So we don’t have to yell across a road at four-thirty in the morning? It’ll be safer if everyone can stay sleeping, right?”

Keep their attention focused on him. Nobody else will get hurt.

“Just you.”

“Just me,” Scott confirmed. He walked forward slowly until he was just out of arm’s reach. “This okay?”

Everything in Stiles was screaming at him to get away, but this was Scott. They had been best friends forever. There had to be something of his best friend left inside this thing.

“What happened, Stiles? You’re still hurt; you shouldn’t be out in the rain.”

“I—I don’t…” Stiles frowned, trying to remember what had happened. Scott’s rain-slicked hair had fallen into his eyes. He reached up to brush it away and Stiles flinched back.

Claws. Blood running like rain—

Rain?

“Okay, that’s all right. You don’t have to remember right now. Did you hurt yourself anywhere? Did you fall?”

“N—no.”

Lightning flashed and Scott’s eyes glowed blue. The thunder followed a second later and Stiles jumped, jerking away from the noise. He slipped on the pavement, body exhausted, and went down on one knee. A shape moved toward him, but Scott flung out a hand, bringing the werewolf to a halt.

“It’s okay, Stiles. It’s just a thunderstorm. Do you remember the time your mom brought us to the lake? We were going to spend all day and all night swimming but as soon as we got there—”

“It started raining,” Stiles whispered, still on his knees. “It rained all day.”

“It did,” Scott said. “And your dad said—”

“We’d get electrocuted. But we didn’t know what that meant.”

Scott smiled. Fangs. Blood. No. No fangs. Just… white teeth. Normal length. No points. “Yeah, exactly.”

Another crash of thunder and Stiles flinched further into himself, pressing his hands to his face.

Monster. Monster. Monster. Evil. Death.

Friend. Best friend.

“Stiles, let’s get you out of this rain, please. Come on. Let’s get you into Allison’s car. She’ll take you home and stay with you. We’ll call your dad.”

Footsteps splashing in the puddles. Stiles scrambled backward, falling back and scraping his heel. “Stay away!”

The footsteps stopped. “Brother, please,” Scott said, voice desperate. “Please, let’s get you warm.”

Monster. Creature. Inhuman.

Brother.

Stiles shoved his hands against his eyes. Nothing made sense. A voice, a dark and rasping, spoke in his ear. Werewolves. Evil. Dirty. Death. Murderers.

Another voice, Scott’s voice. Brother. Don’t leave me. We need you. I can’t lose you.

Thunder crashing overhead and flashes of lightning and whips and blood and eyes like stars in the darkness.

“Scott,” Stiles whispered. “Scott, I don’t understand.”

Scott’s arms wrapped around Stiles’s shoulders. It was familiar. It was friendship and warmth and love and Stiles flung his arms around Scott, finding himself sobbing into his neck. “Call Allison. We need to get him warm,” Scott ordered. “It’s okay, Stiles. It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside again soon.”

The sound of an approaching car and wet brakes. Scott’s arm wrapped around Stiles’s waist, helping him up into the car. People climbed in around him, but Stiles couldn’t see them. The only thing that sounded or looked real to him was Scott.

“Turn the heat up,” Scott said, and then a blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders, followed by the hissing of the car’s heater going full-blast. “Stiles, can you look at me?”

He managed to focus his gaze, blinking rain and tears out of his eyes. Scott was still in his pajamas, water dripping off his hair and nose.

“What did I do?” Stiles asked. Everything was blurry. He remembered running and shoving Derek away and— “Oh, god, Derek.”

“He’s right here,” Scott said, nodding over Stiles’s shoulder. “He’s here.”

Stiles reached blindly behind him. A hand caught his, tight and reassuring. “Where are we going?”

“Back to your place,” Scott said. “We’re all staying with you tonight. What do you remember?”

“I… Just panic. A voice in my head telling me… telling me werewolves were evil and monsters an-and Marcus.”

“That’s pretty much what happened,” Scott said. He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You gave us a scare.”

Stiles leaned back against Derek’s chest, head falling back onto his shoulder. Derek’s arms curled around Stiles’s stomach, and he pressed his lips against Stiles’s throat.

“Sorry,” Stiles whispered.

Everyone was coming into focus. The back of Allison’s head as she navigated through the storm. Lydia braiding her hair out of her face, looking at him with the most concerned expression he’d ever seen. Erica and Boyd, studiously not looking at him. Isaac frowning at him, but silent. A car full of people in their pajamas.

“We’re here,” Allison said, shifting the SUV into park.

It was a group effort to get him through the door. Not so much because he couldn’t support himself, but because nobody was willing to move out of the huddle they had around him, as though he would bolt as soon as they moved. They left him at the door to his bedroom, promising to stay downstairs in case he needed anything.

Only Derek stayed with him, closing the door once the last of them left. It had been Scott, hugging Stiles one last time. Stiles couldn’t bear to look at him. He couldn’t bear to look at anyone, so he stood with his head down, dripping water onto his bedroom floor.

“I’m sorry. I—I understand if—”

Derek just pulled him in for a hug, pressing their foreheads together. “Don’t apologize.”

Stiles started to apologize for apologizing, but caught the words just before he said them. “I don’t know what happened.”

“It doesn’t matter. If it happens again, we’ll deal with it.”

“I called you a monster.”

“Probably not the last time I’ll be called that.”

“Derek—”

Derek pulled Stiles in tighter and pressed his face against Stiles’s throat. His breath shook when he exhaled. “Just… don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

Derek nodded against Stiles’s throat and then pulled back. He kissed Stiles once, a little more forcefully than he usually did, and nodded again. “Let’s get you in dry clothes and to bed. You’ve got to be exhausted.”

He wasn’t. And Derek’s attempts at getting him to sleep only resulted in Stiles pacing around the bedroom while Derek sat cross-legged on the bed and watched, eyebrows furrowed in a frown.

“What’s going on?” Derek asked.

“I’m just…” Stiles shrugged, forcing himself to stand still, flinching at a boom of thunder. “I can’t…”

Derek stood and slipped his arm around Stiles’s waist. “The rest of the pack is still awake, too. Let’s go.”

That was how his dad found them when he came home a few hours later. Stiles, mud-splattered and with dried blood on one foot, curled up in Derek’s arms, Scott on Stiles’s other side. Boyd was sprawled out in the recliner, Erica on the floor in a pile of blankets with only her hair sticking out; Allison and Lydia had taken the loveseat for themselves.

Stiles wasn’t sure if it was the door or the werewolves that woke him up, but he found himself looking at his father and Chris Argent. His father looked bemused and Chris mildly horrified.

“The storm,” Stiles said, grimacing as he disentangled himself from Derek, who seemed reluctant to let him go. “I kind of… freaked.”

“Well, I’m glad everyone is here, then,” Jonathan said. “Do your parents know, or…?”

“I should probably call my mom,” Lydia said, voice strangled. “I am so grounded.”

“I’ll take you home,” Allison offered. She avoided Chris’s gaze, sliding toward the door. “Give me a call if you need anything, Stiles.”

Lydia stepped around Erica and grabbed Stiles in a tight hug. “Take care, Stiles. And please don’t do that again.”

“Okay,” he said. To think that a couple months ago he would have probably been ecstatic that Lydia hugged him, and now all he could think was how sore he was.

“Boyd, Erica, Isaac, go with Allison,” Derek said.

The three werewolves climbed obediently to their feet. Erica squeezed Stiles’s hand as she passed, filing out the door after Allison — “I know, Dad. We’ll talk when you get home” — and Lydia.

“Are you okay?” Jonathan asked once the door closed behind them.

“Yeah,” Stiles said. His heel actually hurt quite a bit, but that wasn’t something he needed to share with his dad.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about them anymore. Chris took care of them.”

“Took care of?”

“Hunter’s justice,” Chris said. “The Argent name still carries quite a bit of weight, despite Kate and Gerard. Besides, they took an innocent, a human kid, and tortured him almost to death. Those hunters won’t touch anyone ever again.”

Stiles let out a shaky breath. Scott touched his arm. Stiles looked toward him, saw the warm concern in his eyes, and shook his head. Scott let him go and stepped a little away.

“All of them?”

“From what the pack told me, all of them,” Chris said.

There was a kind of iron in his gaze that Stiles appreciated. It was the same look he saw in Derek’s eyes when the pack was in danger, or Jonathan’s when he was working on a particularly difficult case. Stiles nodded, feeling Derek stand behind him. Derek’s arms slipped around Stiles’s waist and Stiles nodded again, decisive.

“Okay. That’s that, then. It’s done.”

“Go ahead and pack up your stuff,” Jonathan said, ruffling Stiles’s hair as he passed toward the kitchen. “Go to the loft, but you call me if you feel like running through town barefoot.”

“Wait, really?” Stiles asked, suddenly excited.

Jonathan laughed. “Really. Although I will still shoot you if I need to, Derek.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, grabbed Derek’s wrist, and dragged him up the stairs to help him pack.

 

The ride to the loft was more comfortable than either of the last two times Stiles had been in a car. Part of it was that, aside from a dull ache in his muscles, he wasn’t in pain. And another part of it was that Derek’s hand was resting easily on his knee while he drove.

“So what’re we going to do when we get to your loft?” Stiles asked, grinning.

Derek rolled his eyes. “You’re going to sleep some more. And you’re going to heal.”

“I’m tired of healing,” Stiles grumbled, but he didn’t argue. Given the way Derek had been acting lately, if he tried anything more strenuous than healing, Derek would probably sit on him.

True to his word, Derek carried Stiles’s bag upstairs and promptly saw Stiles to bed. He didn’t think he was tired until he was wrapped up in blankets that smelled like Derek and had Derek himself wrapped around him. He fell asleep so fast it was almost embarrassing.

While Derek didn’t exactly confine him to bed, he didn’t let Stiles out of his sight for very long for the first week. He eased up after that, once Stiles convinced him he wasn’t about to tip over on the bottom stair or make a dash for the door when it started raining.

For the first month, the pack left them alone. Sometimes one of them would stop by when they had something specific to ask Derek, or Scott would bring more of Melissa’s cooking, but other than that, it was just the two of them. Stiles loved it. He spent the time learning everything he could about Derek, curled up against his side or in his arms.

Stiles didn’t know when exactly it happened, but eventually when he said he was going home, he meant he was going back to Derek’s loft. Most of his clothes ended up in Derek’s closet and he and Derek started having dinner with Jonathan Wednesday nights. He wasn’t sure when the month turned into six months and then into a year.

As Stiles’s mind and body healed, he found himself developing an awareness of Derek. He didn’t even notice it at first. Jonathan was the one who pointed it out to him. Whenever Derek left the room, Stiles always looked to the door just before he walked back in.

It happened faster than Derek expected, settling into a constant, but vague, sensation centered in the back of Stiles’s mind. When he tried to explain it to Scott after a night of a few too many drinks, he decided it was like a shirt. When you’re wearing one, you don’t really think about it. But when you do think about it, you can feel the fabric on your skin. He was sure he said it exactly that eloquently, even if Scott asked him the next day why they had spent half an hour discussing polyester blends.

They planned a small ceremony that was less wedding and more werewolf pack tradition with oaths for Derek to say. He had to explain most of them to Stiles, but they were serious enough that it took Derek three days to convince Stiles, whose own part of the oaths was nothing more than saying variations on “I accept” a few times, that this was something he really wanted to do. On the fourth day, Stiles woke up screaming from a nightmare that had nothing to do with whips or torture or boats on the sea.

The ceremony didn’t happen for another several months, after Stiles recovered from a brief, if memorable, possession by an evil fox. But it happened. And Stiles finally was able to sleep through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this was so late! I've been all over the place lately, but here it is. The final chapter of When Days Go From Dark to Bright. Thank everyone who read and reviewed! Even if I didn't respond to your message, I definitely read it!


End file.
